Standing there was Sarah Watts, Timmie’s sister, and she was clutching two pink roses. Puzzled, taking the roses, Regan watched as Sarah fled down the hall.
“Was that Daddy?” Jennifer asked.
“No, but Daddy sent us two more roses.” Attached to each one was a curl of paper in Travis’s handwriting, saying, “Regan, will you marry me? Travis.”
“Is something wrong, Mommie? Why doesn’t Daddy come see us?”
Heedless of the clothes on the bed, Regan sat down. It was just a tiny, lurking suspicion, but the extra roses made her wonder what Travis was planning. With one glance at the clock, she saw that it was just after five-thirty. One rose had been delivered at five, two at five-thirty. No, she thought. It couldn’t be.
“Nothing’s wrong, sweet,” Regan said. “Would you like these roses for your room?”
“They’re from Daddy?”
“They certainly are.”
Jennifer took the flowers, holding them as if they were priceless, and carried them to her room.
At six, when Jennifer and Regan were dressed and going down to breakfast, three more roses were delivered to Regan.
“How lovely,” Brandy said, already up and cooking. Before Regan could protest, Brandy took the flowers, read the attached notes, and put the flowers in a vase. “You don’t look so happy. I thought from the way you’ve been moping for the last three days you’d be pleased to get some sign from him. Three roses with those notes attached would certainly perk me up.”
“There are five roses,” she said seriously. “One delivered at five, two at five-thirty, three at six.”
“You aren’t thinking—,” Brandy began.
“I had forgotten about it, but Travis and I did have words over courting. I made some derogatory remarks about the inability of Americans to court a woman.”
“Not a nice thing to have said,” Brandy said, feeling very American. “Five roses before breakfast shows you what we Americans can do.” With that she went back to cooking.
Feeling she’d offended her best friend, Regan went to the dining room to check that everything was ready. As she was leaving the room, the printer’s boy delivered four yellow roses to her, each with Travis’s note attached.
With an enormous sigh, Regan smiled at the roses, shaking her head. Did Travis never do anything on a small scale? She slipped the notes into her pocket and went to look for a vase.
By ten o’clock, her smile was gone. Every half-hour more roses were delivered, until by now she had a total of sixty-six. The quantity itself wouldn’t be daunting except for the interest the deliveries were exciting within the town. The druggist and his wife came to eat breakfast at the inn, something they’d never done before, and as they were leaving, they stopped to ask Regan questions, namely, who is this Travis who’d hired their three children to deliver roses every half-hour? They were very mysterious about where the children picked up the flowers or who had contacted them, and they were discreet about the notes they’d read—but curiosity was eating them alive.
At noon, a bouquet of fifteen roses, each with a note on its stem, was handed to Regan, and that’s when she began to try hiding. But the whole town seemed to be in conspiracy against her. At five minutes before the hour or half-hour, someone always found something important to say to her, something that would keep her in plain view of everyone when the next bouquet was delivered.
At four o’clock, she was presented with twenty-three roses.
“That makes two hundred and seventy-six,” the owner of the mercantile store said, chalking the number on the wall beside the bar in the taproom.
“Don’t you have any customers today?” Regan asked pointedly.
“Nary a one,” he smiled. “They’re all in here.” He looked back at the jammed taproom. “Who’
ll give me money on when they’re going to stop?”
Turning away, Regan left the room, thrusting the bundle of roses into Brandy’s arms.
“Roses?” Brandy gasped. “What a wonderful surprise. Whoever sent them?”
Regan curled her lip and hissed before continuing down the hall. She wouldn’t put it past Travis to have instigated all the interest in the roses. Surely the townspeople had something better to do than sit around all day and watch her collect roses. Of course, the reason he’d hired every child in town for the deliveries was to create interest with the parents.
At seven o’clock, she received twenty-nine roses, and at eight, she got thirty-one. By nine she had received five hundred sixty-one roses, of every color a rose could create. Travis’s notes, the same thing over and over, were in her pockets, in her desk drawers, in a box on her dressing table, in a copper pan in the kitchen. For all her complaining, she couldn’t bring herself to discard even one of the notes.
By ten she was beginning to wonder if the flowers were ever going to stop. She was tired and wanted nothing more than to climb into bed and be still.
Just as she reached her door, a child thrust a bundle of thirty-five roses into her arms. Once inside, she carefully removed each note, read it, and then stored all of them in a drawer beside her underwear. “Travis,” she whispered, no longer tired. At least alone in her room she could enjoy the roses.