The Budding Flower and the Withered Rose

In her last days I used to stand at the threshold to my mother’s room and watch her, so small under the blankets. She was always staring out the windows, looking past the droplets of water that slid down the glass and out at her rose bushes. Those flowers had been her every joy and pleasure; she would bury herself in the colours and scents whenever life troubled her. She would watch them grow as the tumour grew within her. I think she was contemplating what was to come next; what would happen? Where would she go? I never cried, which was maybe not so good, not even when one morning she didn’t wake up. There was an excruciating hollow pain inside of me like something was missing. I’d cared for her as best I could and that’s why it hurt so much when she died. My best wasn’t enough.

I pace the lounge room with the telephone to my ear and feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins. The blue rug is soft and worn beneath my feet, and the rain hammers down outside as it has all autumn. I use these sensations to calm myself. There must have been some mistake; there’s no way that that briefcase across the room is mine. It is beyond impossible, so absurd as to be laughable. However there exists a small glimmer of hope deep within me, a little voice that says, “take it, it is yours”. What a foolish little voice.

The phone stops ringing and goes to voicemail. I hang it up and drop down onto the couch in front of the case full of cash with a sigh. Twenty-thousand dollars. What little sunlight escapes past the rainclouds shines through the plastic window of a hundred dollar note as I hold it up. It just makes no sense. My mum and I have always been broke, she’d been working three jobs before she died! There were certainly some things in my name in the will that I expected such as her house and her little old car, but when the case arrived with a note from Mum’s executor I had panicked. This is the third time I’ve called her this morning, to no avail. She is on holiday in Vanuatu after all, which is an irritating thing for her to be doing right now. With every passing minute, however, I become more and more certain of the fact that something’s off about this whole thing. Money doesn’t come from nowhere. Mum had a secret.

Adam looks at me over the newsagent’s counter, a bemused half-smile touching his lips.

“Isn’t it a little past your bedtime, Clara?” he teases.

I roll my eyes at him. Adam and I went to school together, him six months older but still in the same grade. We always got along fairly well, but rebellious, eyeliner-wearing Adam didn’t fit in too well with my friends, so we were never close.

Scooping my damp, blonde hair over one shoulder, I rest my forearms on the counter and lean in conspiratorially.

“I’ve come for information.”

All day I’ve been wracking my brain for any idea of how mum could have come into so much cash. The only plausible explanation is the one that I’m chasing up now.

“Did my mother ever buy a lottery ticket from here?”

Adam frowns and chews on his fingernail, whose black polish is already chipped around the edges. His eyes roam to the window as he thinks, and the wet moonlit street beyond.

“Your mother… Judy Morris?” He shakes his head slowly, “no, I do remember her, though. She used to always wear all of those cardigans, right? I’m sorry about her you know. She went before her time.”

I nod, though this revelation makes my heart sink deep down into my stomach and sit there like a rock. I thought for sure that I was right about this. I push away and sigh heavily. Condensation marks the yellow plastic on the counter where my arms were resting.

“Thanks, Adam” I pull the hood of my coat up close around my face and walk out into the rain.

I pull Mum’s little tin can of a car into the driveway and I sit there for a while, alone save for the company of my thoughts and that of the constant rain. At first I was mildly curious about the money, but now… oh boy. The curiosity burns inside of me like a flame which consumes everything else. The problem is that I have no leads. ‘Think, Clara Morris, think,’ prompts that familiar little voice in my head. My mind remains blank, and I hit the palms of my hands against the horn in frustration. It feels good, so I do it again. Again and again, over and over: Honk! Honk! Honk! The dinky car jolts with the impact, rattling unhealthily.

The glovebox falls open with a thump and I stop abruptly. Sitting inside is a small leather book with the number 2002 inlaid in silver on the cover. I reach for it, the sound of the car horn echoing in my ears. The shiny cover is soft and smooth beneath my fingertips, and I tentatively open the book. It seems to be a diary from the year before I was born. The things written in it are doctor’s appointments, mostly, with a few birthdays and coffee dates scattered in throughout. Around May, however, I begin to see two names pop up more often: Mick Hearse and Sue Jennings. They seem to take over her social life, and soon they are the only names in the book. She had never mentioned either of those names before. What on earth happened in 2002?

The library is virtually deserted as I sit in the records section, with only a few people browsing the shelves on the other side of the room. The library smells of vanilla air freshener and dust, and some of the old windows let in stray drips of water from the ever-present rain outside. A small oil heater rattles away next to the front desk, at which a tired looking old woman slowly scans returned books and places them in a pile beside her.

Scattered on the table in front of me are all of the local newspapers that were published in the year 2002, and only three of them mention the names I’m looking for. The first is an article on a new clothing business started up by the 22 year old Sue Jennings, and the picture shows a smiling young woman with skin the colour of fertile soil and eyes bright with excitement. The second is about Mr. Hearse, a wealthy man arriving in town to scope out potential investments, and his interest in a local tailor’s shop.

The third article makes my blood run cold.

Written in bold letters on the front page of the newspaper is a short, sharp headline: Mick Hearse Declared Missing

Flicking through the phone book that rests beside me I try to keep my thoughts under control. I have to get to the bottom of this once and for all.

Sue Jennings lives a few kilometres out of town in a little cottage in the bush. Tentatively, I knock on the forest-green door, which is opened almost immediately. Was she waiting for me? Unsettled, I take in the stout lady in the doorway. I can see the resemblance to the young woman in the newspaper, though this woman is wider about the middle and has a more lined face. Her thick curls are pulled back into a ponytail at the base of her head, and a large floral dress sits around her in a way that is rather flattering to her shape. Dark eyes stare at me in shock from behind coin-like glasses.

“Clara,” she breathes, “what are you doing here?”

Ms. Jennings holds her mug tightly, as if for warmth, though her herbal tea has long since gone cold. She listens to me explain myself so intently that I might be telling an epic tale of knights and dragons, as opposed to that of my amateur detective work. When I’m finished she takes a shaky breath.

Your mother and I were close, yes. Well, until we had to stop being so close, that is.”

I frown, “what?”

Ms. Jennings places her mug on the table and looks down at her hands, which look a lot older than the rest of her.

“I may as well tell you, Honey. I have nothing to lose anymore,” she gives a humourless laugh, “That’s pretty sad, isn’t it?” It is sad, but I don’t reply. My heart is in my throat as she shifts in her seat and laces her fingers together.

“Judy and I were friends since we were kids, and we’d always wanted to run a business together, so when we were old enough we made one. Everything was going really well, we had no competition so we were making a killing! Anyway one day an investor came through door-“

“Mick Hearse.”

“Mick Hearse. After a while your mum fell in love with him. They were happy.” My mother? In love? That is something I can’t even imagine.

“Until Judy found out she was pregnant,” She continues, “Mick was the father, and she told him because she was just so excited. Well… he wasn’t happy. She wanted a family and he refused to be a part of it, Judy just got caught up in the heat of the moment,” Ms. Jennings looks me in the eyes and says firmly, “Baby, I want you to know your mother was a good woman. Sometimes good people do bad things, and that’s just a part of life. She called me up and she was crying saying that she’d killed him, she’d killed him, so I rushed over to her place and there was blood all over the floor and she's there sobbing with a bread knife in her hand. I helped her clean it up, I’ll admit to that. For her I had to pretend to be all calm but I really thought I was going to vomit. We put him in the garden and put some roses on top so it wouldn’t seem so funny for us to be digging there. Then we took his money, Sweetie, we took a big case of it from his room because he didn’t need it. Judy saved it for her baby, for when she couldn’t look after her anymore. And see? Nine months later that lovely baby was born and that baby was you, Clara!”

I stand up violently, knocking over the chair on which I’d been sitting.

“You’re a liar!” I yell at her. Ms. Jennings looks at me with infinite sadness in her eyes. I want to hit something; I want to make something break. I knew my mother and she would never do anything like that, never. Out the green door I stagger, “You’re a liar,” I repeat quietly. Turning I sprint to my car, tearing away from the woman in the cottage. I don’t take notice of the drive home.

When I arrive I find myself standing in front of mum’s roses. I grab them in my bare hands and rip them out, all of them. The thorns rip open my palms open but I keep going until I can’t anymore. I called her a liar but I know deep inside of me that it’s true. I collapse in the dirt, curling up into a ball, my nose filling with the scent of roses and dirt. She always hated me going near her roses; she’d always pull me away from them when I was little. Now I know why. As the sobs tear my body apart I realise my whole childhood was a lie. Now I know everything.