He opened my bag and found my roll of peppermints and put one in my mouth.
I was like a rag doll. He could move me and sit me and stand me up and feed me. It didn’t matter. Who had I been fooling? I couldn’t do it all without any help. When would I learn that sometimes I had to let the people close to me in a little bit closer.
Dulcie. Nina. Maybe…even Noah.
To learn that I might have to accept that one day I could wind up needing more than what I got back or wanting more than anyone could give. I might wind up being disappointed and let down. I might.
But if my thirteen-year-old daughter could learn that lesson, certainly I could make an effort to learn it too.
I just wasn’t as optimistic about how good a student I was going to be.
We were on the path now, walking through the elaborate English garden I’d admired the first time I’d come to Greenwich three weeks earlier. Most of the flowers had long since stopped blooming, except for some daisies and one of the rosebushes. I leaned over the last of the season’s full, old-fashioned, pink roses. I breathed in. The perfume was almost too heavy. Too sweet.
Taking a step back I crushed some of the daisies. The white and yellow flowers were bright and too cheerful. It made me sad that I had crushed them and the tears came again. From where?
How could there be so many?
Jordain’s arm led me farther down the path. Crimson and scarlet, lemon and russet and rich brown leaves from the oak, maple, and birch trees sprinkled this part of the walkway. We passed wide hosta beds, the leaves still full but yellowed and withering.
Growing among these plants, towering over them, were butterfly bushes. The one plant that I knew the most about. The purple, lavender, and white flowers were mostly gone, except for three or four that had bloomed late. When the first frost came, they would freeze.
That was when I saw her. Fragile, strong, and so beautiful.
How long had she been there feeding? Was she even real? I stopped moving and beside me, so did Jordain. The brilliant monarch couldn’t be a hallucination because he was staring at her, too, watching her fold her orange, red, and black wings up behind her black body and continue feeding.
We stood side by side without saying anything.
The butterfly took her fill of the last of the season’s nectar, spread her wings, lifted up and hovered in the air for ten or twenty seconds.
I held my breath.
She was hesitant at first, trembling on the wind, waiting for some mysterious clue from the breeze to tell her what direction would speed her onward to her destination. Still tentative, she circled the bush once more and then suddenly, somehow instinctively sure of where she was going, she took flight and soared.
And then Jordain took me home.
Acknowledgments
To the whole team at MIRA from Donna Hayes, Dianne Moggy, Margaret O’Neill Marbury to everyone in the sales force, art department, editorial department, marketing department, publicity department and mail room. What a wonderful home, I have. Thank you all for your hard work, creativity, and warmth.
To all my friends and associates but with special thanks to Lisa Tucker and Doug Clegg, two amazing authors, and the indefatigable Carol Fitzgerald-the trio who talk me through my books and hold my hand the whole time.
To Mara Nathan who is my key to Morgan Snow’s world and my Nina. To Randi Kraft for her eye and her friendship.
To Chuck Clayman who tried to keep me from mistakes with legal issues. (My failures are not his.)
To Gigi, Jay, Jordan, Daddy, Ellie, Doug and Winka too, for all the love, with love.
M.J. Rose (www.mjrose.com) is the international best selling author of several novels and two non-fiction books on marketing.
Her fiction and non-fiction has appeared in many magazines and reviews including Oprah Magazine. She has been featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, USA Today and on the Today Show, and NPR radio.
Rose graduated from Syracuse University, spent the ’80s in advertising, has a commercial in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and since 2005 has run the first marketing company for authors – Authorbuzz.com
The television series PAST LIFE, was based on Rose's novels in the Renincarnationist series. She is one of the founding board members of International Thriller Writers and runs the blogs- Buzz, Balls & Hype.
Rose lives in CT with her husband the musician and composer, Doug Scofield, and their very spoiled and often photographed dog, Winka.
M J Rose
M.J. Rose is the internationally bestselling author of novels and coauthor of two nonfiction books on marketing. Her work has appeared in many anthologies including Oprah's Live Your Best Life and Thriller. The creator of the first marketing company for authors, Authorbuzz.com, Rose is also a founding member and on the board of directors of International Thriller Writers. She lives in Connecticut with composer and musician Doug Scofield and their spoiled dog, Winka.
