Page 121 of The Queen of Roses

She took a sip of her beer. “I keep telling myself something has to break for me soon. Doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does,” he said.

“Otherwise, my mother will be right and all of this will turn out to be a big failure.”

He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “I don’t know your mother, but I do know she’s wrong. You are not a failure.”

She looked down at their hands and then turned hers so they were palm to palm. “Thank you. What about you? You told me that you started working for Miss Pearce when you were a kid.”

“That’s right,” he said.

“And your mother was a friend of hers?”

“Not a friend so much as they knew some people in common, I think. Maybe from the Altadena Town and Country Club.”

“A country club kid?” she teased. “If I had known, I would have worn my diamonds.”

“My mom specializes in living beyond her means.”

“So that’s where she met Miss Pearce?”

He shrugged. “It’s just a guess. Mom’s never been the best with details unless they’re the time and date of a party.”

“Your mother is an actress?” she asked.

“Was. She was under contract at MGM and had a bit of success with some second-string parts in the early thirties, but then she got pregnant with me.”

“What about your dad?”

He looked down at their hands, trailing his thumb over her knuckles. “He joined up after Pearl Harbor and never came back.”

She gave his hand a squeeze.

“After Dad died, Mom spent a lot of time going to screen tests and trying to talk her way into the right Hollywood parties to recapture her missed opportunities,” he continued. “I spent a lot of time with our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Martinez, and her sons until they went to high school and started playing baseball and chasing girls.

“Miss Pearce sort of appeared out of nowhere after that. If it hadn’t been for her, I don’t know what Mom would have done with me,” said Matt, breaking the connection between their hands to pick up his chopsticks again.

“Have you ever talked to Miss Pearce about how she created the garden at Rosewood House?” Theresa asked.

“A little here and there. She told me she was mostly self-taught.”

“Entirely,” she said. “That is, it sounds like she had the help of a gardener and some books. That was about it. She was raised to be a society lady in London.”

“That explains a lot,” said Matt.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Miss Pearce is a funny one. For years, she’s been right there in the nursery with me. She’d do everything—sell to customers, pot up plants, take cuttings, graft trees—but she always had a particular way of doing things. She’s almost formal when dealing with customers, like she’s a grand lady welcoming them into her home.”

“That’s probably from all of the entertaining she did in the early 1900s.”

“It puts some people off, but I love it. She made buying a rose feel like an event.” He leaned in across the table, his eyes sparkling. “Do you want to know what the wholesale clients call her? ‘The Queen of Roses.’ ”

Theresa smiled. “It suits her.”

Matt snorted. “You can’t tell her. She’d hate it.”

“I won’t. Promise. Does she still work at the nursery?”