“Hybrid tea roses and grandifloras,” said Bob Rigsby. “There’s a bed of Queen Elizabeth outside my window.” He peeled up a dried strip of masking fluid, and in the mirror they watched a white stripe appear through the pink and crimson.

“My mother grew those roses,” said Miss Lila Hardwick. There was a groan. Once Miss Lila latched on to something, it was hard to get her off it.

“My mother grew those roses,” said Miss Lila.

Bob Rigsby stopped and looked up. “What roses?”

“Out by the washhouse,” said Miss Lila.

“Lila!” said Miss Ethel impatiently. “We’re not talking about out by the washhouse, we’re talking about the municipal rose beds downtown. Your mother didn’t plant those roses, the city planted those roses in 1995!”

“My mother grew those roses,” Lila said.

“Hush, Lila!” snapped Emily Hancock. “Your mother is dead, dead, dead!”

Lila based up and raised her chin. She leaned out and looked down the row at Emily Hancock. “I am the Rose Queen,” she said. “Who are you?”

That night when Della brought him supper, Bob Rigsby was so excited he would not sit down, but paced up and down in front of the windows popping cucumber sandwiches into his mouth one after another.

“I spent the afternoon in the newspaper archives at the library,” he told Della all in a rush, “and there she was on microfilm—Miss Lila Hardwick, the Rose Queen of ’33. Listen to this: ‘Over two thousand roses were used to create this rose-covered cart in which rode Morrisville’s own Rose Queen, Miss Lila Hardwick, a vision of loveliness well chosen to represent our City of Roses in this third annual Rose Show.’

“It was fabulous!” said Bob Rigsby, wiping mayonnaise off his fingers. “One of the biggest rose exhibitions in the country. They lined the walls of the tobacco warehouse with pine boughs and set up shelves all down the middle for the roses—thousands of roses from all over the Southeast. The streets were strewn with rose petals, the ice company froze roses in huge blocks of ice, there was a grand parade with forty floats and eight bands. And for the Rose Queen they soaked a wicker pony cart in Barnett’s Creek overnight and wove the stems of two thousand roses into the wet wicker. They did it every April until the war, and after that they never could muster the enthusiasm for it again, and now seventy years later all they do is plant these pitiful mildewed Queen Elizabeths in the municipal flower beds so they can still call themselves the City of Roses. It’s almost gone, but look here. Look at this.”