Free Rose for Rose: Book Two in the Angels' Mirror Series by Harmony L. Courtney Page A

afraid, even.
    Had something happened since they’d spoken on the phone?
    “Actually, I do,” Edward replied, taking in the girl who was seated to his left.
    Not knowing enough about the late twenties and early thirties kind of threw him, but he’d studied enough to hopefully get by. He could tell the clothing was era-correct, and the hat in front of her seemed to be one that had come back into fashion in recent years.
    With a designer for a wife, he was thankful that he’d gotten at least some of those details down in his mind. Not enough to try his own hand at it, but at least enough not to feel out of place and time, completely.
    “I used to,” the girl, Rose, said quietly, now fingering her hat, eyes downcast.
    Mark whistled, then came to sit with them, as Eugenie turned around.
    “Really,” Eugenie asked. “Cocoa in the heat?” She sounded genuinely shocked. Her eyes widened, and she turned her head a little sideways, as if waiting for an explanation.
    What was so shocking about that?
    Eugenie must think the world is coming to an end, people drinking cocoa in August , Edward told himself facetiously as he smiled, then glanced back over to Rose. He sobered his thinking quickly as he realized that, in some ways, it really had, for Rose. Sure felt really odd to me, coming into a new time, a totally unfamiliar place, not knowing a single soul.
    “Yeah, I do, really… at least I did before… before the Depression and…and before my Mother died,” she said, even more quietly.
    There was a quality fit for music in that voice; sad music, but music all the same. Edward wondered briefly how well she’d sing jazz later on in life, then chided himself, shaking his head to clear it.
    Now wasn’t the time for such thoughts. The girl had just mentioned something horrific in her life; something painful that deserved the honor of being listened to.
    “And when was that, if I can ask,” Edward quietly asked her.
    He looked at her, noticing just how very green her eyes were, and the short, flattened wave of her hair, the color of wheat ready for harvest.
    The girl, who looked about fourteen or fifteen, looked up at him.
    “I’m sorry to be so blunt, it’s just… my own mother died when I was born and I think maybe I could empathize, even just a little bit,” he said in reply to the query in her eyes.
    He took two fingers and pinched them together, leaving a quarter inch apart, to show her he meant it, a question in his eyes. He sent her a questioning look, and she nodded silently before replying.
    “Mother died less than a year ago… in March, trying to have a baby. It was the fourteenth, a Friday, and I remember it was a full moon” she began. Tears rimmed and then began spilling one by one from her eyes, and she shook them away, sniffling, rubbing at them with the back of her hands before she continued.
    “My Aunts Evelyn Una and Angela Rose – I was named for her, and Evelyn was named for my Nanama Wishart – well, they were over, even though they live miles and miles away and almost never visit. And the…the baby… she was a… a little girl. Sarah Jene, well… that’s the baby… she didn’t make it, either. So, it’s… it’s been my… my Father, me, and my little brothers Steven, Michael, Warren, and Peter. I’m the oldest. Fifteen,” she said quickly; quietly.
    Her voice was almost a whisper, but not quite.
    Now that she was talking it was like a floodgate had been opened. She began to sob. The memories of all she’d been through must be just pouring out in a confused jumble, like happened to him for the first… well, at least five months, Edward surmised.
    And with all this confession… all these memories being shared, Edward had a confirmation that this may, indeed, be the long lost Rose Peter had been searching for.
    At ninety and in ill health, he might not have a lot of time to reconnect, but if they could… if Rose could see the reality of… Edward sighed in frustration.
    How am I