Page 155 of The Queen of Roses

“The truth is I am tired,” said Adele. “I think I have been tired for months.”

“Can I get you anything?” she asked.

Adele shook her head. “Matthew is at the nursery checking things over. If I need anything, I can ask him.”

“It looks like the fire’s almost out,” Theresa said.

Adele closed her eyes. “Thank goodness for that.”

Theresa toyed with the strap of her handbag. “I should probably be going.”

“Theresa? I wish to thank you,” said Miss Pearce, stopping her. “If it had not been for you coming into my life, I doubt I would have had the courage to tell Matthew any of what we discussed this morning. I thought I was doing him a kindness in letting him have the stories of his family unsullied by my recollections, but I can see now I was too cowardly to tell him the truth. I would still like it very much if you would write my story. I wish for him to know about this place—about me—in as much detail as you can muster.”

“I would be honored to write it,” Theresa said.

Adele closed her eyes. “Good. Then we will resume our conversations on Saturday.”

Theresa began to edge toward the porch steps.

“He’s a good man, you know.”

She froze on the top step, her hand on the porch banister. “I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t think that I didn’t notice the two of you showing up together at the same time on Saturday,” said Adele. “I knew he had a date on Friday evening, and I’m delighted to find that he has good enough sense that you were the woman he was taking out. You could do worse than falling in love with a man like Matthew.”

Theresa could help neither her blush nor her smile. “Do you think so?”

“I know it.”

“Will you tell him that I had to go home?” she asked.

Adele’s eyes fluttered open. “I have no doubt he would be delighted to see you at the nursery.”

“I think it’s a good idea to give him a little bit of space. So he can think. A lot has changed over the past couple of days.”

Adele nodded. “I will tell him.”

When Theresa reached Allen Avenue, she found several reporters packing up. Matt had said she should take his car by grabbing the keys from the glove compartment, but something about the idea of taking such a liberty suddenly made her feel shy. Instead, she managed to swing a ride back home with a reporter from the Los Angeles Examiner.

When she walked into the front door of her studio, she was confronted with the unfortunate remnants of the breakfast she and Matt had abandoned. She quickly cleaned up, throwing open all the windows in the studio to let in fresh air. Then she went to take a shower, standing under the hot spray until the water ran cold.

She got out and wrapped one towel around herself and one around her hair. Then she lay back on her bed and promptly fell fast asleep.

Theresa woke to the ringing of the telephone. Groggy and disoriented, she pushed off her bed and stumbled to the phone, still wrapped in her towel, although the one wrapped around her hair had fallen off at some point in the night.

“Theresa?” asked a woman on the other end when she answered.

“This is she,” she croaked, gripping the receiver.

“It’s Mary Horowitz.”

“Mary! Is everything all right?”

“Look, you didn’t hear this from me, but when I came in this morning my managing editor was right in the middle of the newsroom, fuming at how good the Herald Times’s fire coverage was. He was impressed with the human angle of some of the features. I took the liberty of telling him I know the Theresa Johnson who had the byline. That got him interested.”

“Really?” Theresa asked.

“He wants to know if you can have lunch with him next week.”