Over the next week, Brenna managed to paper the parlor with a certain amount of help from do-it-yourself library books and calls to the hardware store. When she was done, she put all the furniture back in place and her painting back on the mantle. She had bought a beautiful rose-shaded lamp in town and it now sat on the table next to the phone. Standing back, she surveyed the room. Beautiful, just beautiful. She smiled with delight, a warm feeling of satisfaction stealing over her.
That evening, Brenna climbed into a hot bubble bath and read until her eyelids were drooping. She had had no more nightmares this week, she could hardly believe it. Maybe Molly was right, maybe this place was healing. She dried off and slipped into her favorite terrycloth robe. After letting the animals out for one last rendezvous with the lawn, she brushed her auburn hair until it shone. She looked in the mirror critically. No, she couldn’t cut her hair, it was one of her best assets. Her father had loved his girls’ hair. They had their mother’s hair...her eyes grew misty and she shook her head. Enough, she was tired of being sad.
She sat on the front steps, her eyes heavy as if she had cried out all her tears. She twisted a delicate white handkerchief in her hands and smoothed her black dress over her knees. They had just that morning buried her precious baby, her Victoria Rose. She had been so tiny, too impossibly tiny to live; so completely perfect with her downy hair, her translucent skin, her beautiful little hands and feet with their tiny nails. She had considered burying her in her christening gown, but then decided she couldn’t part with it. Instead she and Martin had looked over the tiny clothes and chosen a soft pink knit dress, a gift from her best friend, Margaret. Margaret had come over and helped her ready the baby for burial, just the day after her birth and death. Townspeople were saying she had gone mad with grief, not calling in the undertaker and trying to bury her baby herself. These weren’t the dark ages after all. But Margaret understood and was honored to tears that her dress had been chosen for Victoria’s burial. Margaret and her husband had come to stand with them over the grave in the back corner of their property, surrounded with a white picket fence, as the minister said words of grief and comfort over the little coffin. She and Martin had each thrown a handful of dirt on the tiny coffin, and Margaret had caught her as she began to collapse from grief while the men finished filling in the small grave. The stone would not arrive until next week. But they had chosen to honor their only daughter on this day by planting a climbing pink rose by their front door so her memory would be ever present. And so she sat on the steps in the June sunshine, unable to understand how the sun could shine on this day, while Martin tamped the dirt down around the bush. It wasn’t blooming yet, but Martin had said it was a beautiful rose and he always spoke the truth to her. Standing, he brushed off his hands and helped her up and into the parlor...