Rose's Garden (32 page)

“The view,” he would say to her, trying to distract her from his sorrow, seeing the fingernail moon rise early in the still-blue sky. “Look at the sky, the swallows.”

And then he would be home again, just as if a curtain had been pulled aside. He was home in his own garden, flowers pulsing behind his eyelids, home in their bedroom with its silvering mirrors. He would be kneeling by her bed in those final moments, a flutter of wings around them, his pigeons lifting skyward. “What did you say? Rose! What did you say?”

For she would be going, she would be on her way. And he heard her then at last, heard the final words that had eluded him all this time.

“Paradise,” she said, and lifted her hand.

“Look, Conrad,” she said. “Look at the view from Paradise Hill.”