What he brought her was sweet stems of honeysuckle and thorny roses wrapped partially in a wide satin ribbon. It was so out of the blue.

She’d just come from the shower, her hair all turbaned up, a thick terry robe wrapped around her body when she heard the doorbell ring. No one good rings the doorbell at 7 a.m. Her chest clinched. Who? Wha?.

She cracked open the front door—as far as the security chain would allow—and let out a sigh of relief. It was just a kid from the neighborhood—15? 18? He was tall, full bodied but in that loose way of children. He had soft brown eyes draped in thick black lashes. His eyes were cast down, a bashful blush swimming across his face. Without looking up he extended the bundle of flowers towards her.

For her? What the heck? Why was her bringing her flowers?

He cocked his head a bit, like a puppyy with a question and thrust the bundle forward again, urging her to take it.

When she didn’t slip the chain from the door, and step out to take them. He took a step forward and laid the bundle on the step, looked up briefly at her, and then turned and ran in a gangly lope, looking over his shoulder and grinning.

She watched until he turned at the corner and was out of sight.Then she slipped the chain, opened the door and picked up the bundle.

Honeysuckle and roses. Such a delightful comingling of beauty. Such an aromatic blend. Who could have thought of such a combination. Yet he had. It felt intimate.

She brought them into the kitchen and prepared a vase, gently unwrapping the ribbon. She saw that he had clipped the thorns from the lower stems. These were not hot house roses. They were someone’s, his perhaps, tended beauties.

She sat them on a low table in the living room where the beauty and fragrance could fully embrace her.

It was crowded at Ketchums. She and her friend, Freya had meant to get out early for lunch but Edgar, the new manager, had droned on so long at the team meeting that here they were waiting for a lunch table at Ketchums. They’d be late getting back and Edgar was sure to make a big deal about it.

Ordering something quick seemed prudent. So both she and Freya ordered a cold sandwich and the soup of the day: Squash Blossom Soup. What ever that was—they both laughed. They often had a glass of wine with lunch, but not today. No need to give Edgar more fuel. While they waited for their food, she told Freya about the flowers.

“So this dude, that you don’t even know rings your doorbell at 7 a.m. Doesn’t say a bloody word and pushes backyard flowers at you?” Freya said in disbelief. Her extra large earrings boobed frantically beneath her dark brown boycut. Freya was more exotic than pretty. Her intensity was electric. “Creepy…. Dang girl, that’s just flat out creepy? Do you have outside cameras?”

“It wasn’t creepy , exactly,” she said, dipping the corner of her paper napkin into the water glass and dapping the soup stain from her cardigan. “It was weird. For sure. But I didn’t get a creepy vibe, and besides he didn’t hang around.’

“Trust me,” Freya said, her mouth full of food. She swallowed and then gestured with her sandwich. “How does this random dude know about your connection to honeysuckle and roses? Tell me again that that isn’t creepy.”

“Wait,” she said stiffening, leaning forward and slapping the table with her hand, “how do you know about honeysuckle and roses?” Her heart was pounding in her ears. That was her secret. Nobody knows. Nobody could know. The kid wasn’t random, not really. He was a neighborhood kid. She’d seen him around. The flowers, just somethings he cut from his yard. A beautiful coincidence from the Universe. That’s what she’d thought. Until now. Until Freya.

“You told me once. That time we went to see Maroon Five and got wasted in a motel room.” The air around Freya prickled. Dishes clanked from nearby tables. The riot of surrounding conversations circled and hovered.

“I don’t remember that.” She said and felt deflated, diminished. “The concert, yeah. But after…I don’t…”

The world stood still. it felt as though a boulder had landed smack in the middle of their table. They could no longer see each other. What words were said bounced back unacknowledged.

She was uneasy in her bed that night. She felt vulnerable and exposed. The darkness that she had always trusted seemed risky and devious. He knows. It whispered. Pinned as she was to the bed and the night, she could not argue. He knew and would always know. Freya knew.

She would never be safe again. She had tilted out of favor.

The key they’d given me still fit the lock, but the house no longer felt like home. I’d been away a long time, so logically there was no reason for it to be anything more than a house I once lived in. A house that had captured my childhood and locked it away. Yet as I wiggled the key in the lock, its reluctance to give way a mirrored how I was feeling inside. I felt the tears come. Maybe from loss, maybe from remembrance, maybe from what had never been—but was still somehow wanted.

The house itself was a simple two-bedroom shotgun house and was in remarkably good shape given its years of abandonment and neglect. Moss grew on the edges of the north facing windows. The shrubs on either side of the front door were wild and unruly reaching out in all directions desperate for connection. I understood that.

When I stepped into the living room—the darkness swallowed me. Darker than I remembered. It took my breath and wouldn’t give it back. It was early afternoon the brightest part of the day. Yet this darkness was thick and heavy and all encompassing. I fumbled in the plastic grocery bag for my cellphone and turned on the flashlight and slowly swept the room.

I saw not only the debris of passing squatters: beer cans, cheeto wrappers, cigarette butts, broken candles, hair and dust, old socks, a watch cap. I saw my little brother Tommy when he was about three. I saw his perfect golden skin, the way wisps of light brown hair framed his face. He was squatting on the floor, his matchbox cars all lined up, the teddy bear he had inherited from me propped against the bottom of the sofa. My mother had been so proud of that sofa—not new—but new to us and in far better shape than anything we had ever had. I saw my mother’s legs as she sat in the wooden rocker my gramma had give us. Just her legs—torn from a larger memory.

It was a happy memory and it pleased me—rare as an angel’s eyelash. I hadn’t even known it was there.Tears fell gently down my face like a Spring shower. My gramma used to tell me that tears were God’s blessing. They let out all the big emotions: rage and saddness, grief and frustration, love and joy—so they couldn’t overwhelm us and take us down. I didn’t understand it then. I think I understand it now. Gramma was the beginning and the end. I miss her. I loved her and I hated her. It all bubbles together in the cauldron.

From the living room there was a short hallway that lead directly to the kitchen. One small bedroom on either side. One for my brothers and me. The other for my mother and her friends. My mother had a lot of friends. Temporary friends, I realize retrospectively, but abundant. I didn’t open the doors to the bedrooms. I wasn’t ready for that and depending…. I might never be ready.

I aimed the cellphone light directly down the hall to the kitchen and quickly realized it was unnecessary. I’d forgotten how much natural light came from the two windows in the kitchen. The doorway to the kitchen still held the hinges from a door that had been there when we were all children. It had a hook lock, high on the door so we children couldn’t reach it. A hook that was necessary, my mother said because food was constantly going missing.

The brickwork linoleum was the same as I remembered it. It always looked old and and dirty. There was no stove only a gap in the cabinetry where one had been. We had a stove. I remember that. It never worked. My mother stacked the can goods she got from the church ladies on top and shoved dirty dishes and clothes in the oven when she heard them knock on the door. My mother rarely cooked. She and her friends were always busy, but we children became adept at using the hotplate and the Hamilton Beach 2-slice toaster. It was mostly me and my older brother Eugene who did the cooking. Tommy never got old enough to try.

A very old fridge remained in the kitchen. It could have been the same one I remember—but more likely it was the same vintage. The doors stood open and fortunately there was precious little rotting or moldy food in it.

Off to one side of the kitchen was a lean-to addition which was the bathroom. A sink, a toilet, and floor drain shower. Precious little insulation. In the winter the pipes would freeze and several times over the years the pipes burst and we had to shut off the water to the whole house until one of mother’s friends could be persuaded to fix it. We often went months without running water in the house. Using instead gallon milk jugs which we filled at the Texaco three blocks away.

I was suddenly exhausted. My legs felt wobbly. I was shaky and weak. I stepped out of the bathroom, one hand against the wall for support and made my way through the kitchen and out the back door to sit on the cinder block step. My chest felt tight. Air unable to get in or out. Yet it did but just enough. I reached into my plastic grocery bag that held pretty much everything I took with me from the State Hospital and brought out a half back of Marlboro Reds (my first real luxury in years) and a bic lighter the cab driver had given me. I was almost too weak to light the cigarette—if you an believe that. Finally after four or five attempts, I got it lit. I was too eager. Took in too much smoke, coughed and sputtered and hacked until I was sure I was going to die. It hurt. My lungs and throat. The beautiful pain of it. The chaotic body response. This, not the house, was my home.

What I couldn’t work out at first was why the house was down to me. Why would anyone leave anything to me? It seemed off. I spent the rest of the afternoon on the cinder block step, smoking and thinking, and smoking some more. It came to me quietly when my mind and body settled into the tobacco stupor that the house was mine because I was the only one left alive or released from an institution.

They were all free either in death or the sanitized walls of their respective wards. I had it worse. I’d merely exchanged one ward for another. Only this one was more terrifying. It reeked of secrets and was bouyant with memories.

I deserve this. I was the worst.

I wonder if the Texaco is still there. If they still sell cigarettes and let customers use their bathroom.

She was buried deep in sleep, submerged in the warmth, on the outskirts of dreams, when she felt him shift and quietly slip out of bed. That was Jim, her sweet, always (almost) considerate husband who always rose from bed before her. Showering in the downstairs bathroom so as not to wake her. She sighed, turned over and began the slow and faltering ascent to wakefullness. NPR came on the radio playing the low familiar voice of Steven Inskeep detailing the relief efforts after Hurricane Helene in Asherville. And then the smell of coffee and aftershave whispered into the room. Jim set the coffee on the nightstand and bent to kiss her forhead.

“Good morning, Sunshine!”

She looked up and smiled at him. “Good morning, Love.” Her smile widened as she sat up in bed and reached for the coffee—felt the warmth of the cup in her two hands, took in the aroma, an finallyh took the tinyest sip, savoring both the taste and the temperature.

“What’s your day look like?” She asked her eyes slitted open.

He sat on the edge of bed and in his deepest quietiest voice told her about his plans for the day.

When she heard the front door click and car start up in the driveway, she slipped into her robe and entered her morning peaceful and grounded.

They’d been invited to a dinner party hosted by a new work colleague of Jim’s, Bennett and his wife Emily. They lived across town in a newly purchased two-story mock-Victorian in a gated community. In the mid-November darkness, under the pho-antique amber street lights, every single home and garden looked cut from a magazine—tidy and perfect—more holographic than real.

Bennett and Emily’s driveway flagstone pavers and circular—a bit pretentious she thought but didn’t articulate. She was irratated with herself for the negative comparison to their own home and garden. She took a deep breath and silently repeated, I _am enough _until she felt grounded and at ease.

Dinner was simple: a yummy homemade lasagna, a tossed Italian vegetable salad and loads of fresh baked bread, olive oil, and parmasan cheese.

Jim told about how hard his company had worked to recruit Bennett and how lucky they were to get him. Bennett, he told the table, was a brilliant negotiator—and had landed an unprecedented contract—the highest the company at ever offered. Bennett appeared to blush.

“Oh yes, I know full well what a champion negotiator my Bennett is, “ Emily said, reahing across the table and taking Bennett’s hand. “It’s the major reason I even dated him, let alone married him?”

Bennett fidgeted in his seat bashful, then kissed her hand and released it.

“Of the two of us,” Bennett said softly, “Emily is by far the better negotiator. I’ve argued to this day, that it had all been part of her master plan.”

“Are you saying, that you were and are the ultimate prize?” Emily teased, her eyes teased.

“Not at all. I couldn’t have known at first meeting, but I quickly came to realize—you are always the ultimate prize and I’m the lucky bloke who married up.”

After dinner they all retired to the living room —where Emily and Bennett shared how they met at a frat party in college and how Emily wanted none of him. Bennett, unplussed, pursued, cajoled and bargained for every date and phone call. By the time they finished their story they were all deep into their second bottle of Chianti and howling with laughter.

“How about you guys?” Emily asked. “How did you meet? Was it love or something else at first sight?”

“You tell them, Hon,” JIm said shifting a bit on the sofa in order to make eye contact with her. “It’s not nearly as entertaining as your story—so be warned.’’

They were all looking at her—waiting. JIm gave her hand a squeeze of encouragement. “You’re a much better story teller that me. I’m the facts guy.’

All that was true. But here’s the thing she couldn’t remember. It was the wine of course. The wine and the social pressure. They were all looking t her. But try as she did, she just could fish the memory out of the quamire of her mind. At the moment it felt as though all of her memories had Jim in them. In the jumble soup of her mind there was no beginning —no before and after.

“Oh my gosh,” she said, “ I think I’ve had too much wine—it’s completely out of my mind at the moment. You tell them Jim—give them the facts-only version and I’ll jump in.”

“It was the first Tuesday in March 2018. I was leaving the Starbucks on Madison and Main. You came storming through the door just as I was leaving and knocked a Venti Americano all down the front of my white shirt and silk tie. You peeled off your pink cashmere scarf, all the while apologizing over and over again and blotting at my shirt and tie. You just kept rambling apologizing—until it became ridiculous and were both started laughing. I knew it then. She was something special.”

They all laughed and she laughed a little to. But the thing was she had never owned a pink cashmere scarf and to the best of her recollection had never been to the Starbucks on Maxwell and Main. It was all so disturbing.

In the car on the way home she said. “What’s the story about the Starbucks and a pink cashmere scarf?”

“Well,” he said, his eyes fixed on the wet road ahead. “We couldn’t tell them the truth, could we?”

They had stopped for a red light and he turned and held her firmly in his gaze, so tightly that she could not squirm away.

“But I don’t remember?” she whispered.

“You weren’t meant to,” he said and reached over and squeezed her hand for reassurance.