Not with the desperate grief I had known after Michael died.
Not with the humiliation I had felt at the wedding.
These tears were different.
They came from somewhere deep inside me, where love had been waiting patiently beneath sorrow.
When I finally stepped back, Caleb wiped his eyes.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
I smiled weakly.
“More secrets?”
“One good one.”
He led me toward the far wall of the greenhouse.
There, beneath the afternoon sunlight, stood twelve rosebushes in large terracotta pots.
Their flowers were the same deep red as the bouquet I had carried into his wedding.
I stared at them.
“Where did these come from?”
Caleb knelt beside the nearest pot.
“Dad gave me a cutting when I turned eighteen. He said I should take a piece of home wherever I went.”
I remembered.
Michael had packed the little plant into Caleb’s car when he left for college.
I had assumed it died years ago.
Caleb smiled.
“I kept it. Even when I moved apartments. Even when I forgot to water it and had to nurse it back to life.”
He touched one of the leaves.
“Before the wedding, I took cuttings from it and arranged for a nursery to help me grow new plants.”
I looked at the twelve rosebushes.
“They all came from that one cutting?”
He nodded.
“I wanted to give them to you after the wedding. I thought it would be a way of bringing Dad home.”
I covered my mouth.
“And Sabrina?”
“She knew about the bouquet, but not these.”
