Every time she passed the bathroom Judy could not help glancing in. There stood the small red fragrant winter rose… calling her… beckoning her to inquire into its mystery.

It was only a flower, you might say. Do you really think there’s all that to read into it?

I suppose all writers have a healthy dose of poet and mystic in them. Judy and I are always looking at everyday occurrences from such allegorical and significative angles.

If it seems a little odd, you’ll have to forgive us. We’ve been married over twenty years and still give each other roses. I suppose we’re hopeless romantics. But then… maybe that’s why I write books!

In any case, we had, during this time, been talking about and brainstorming several new book and plot ideas. Two mornings later Judy called at my office and told me about the rose she had picked.

“I can’t help thinking there’s a story here,” she said. “Can’t you just see a book called The Rose? It’s so simple, yet full of… I don’t know—don’t you feel the mystique in it?”

“Yeah, yeah… right,” I replied. I was busy on something else at the time. End of discussion.

Half an hour later the phone rang again. Essentially we repeated the same conversation all over again. My wife was being the romantic at that stage, not me!

Again the phone rang.

“I’m sorry,” laughed Judy. “I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but I think there’s something here. There’s a story behind this rose, I’m sure of it! A mystery, a love story… something! Picture this scene….”

By this time I was ready to listen.

Actually, in the meantime, somewhere between the second and third call, the same compelling sense of a story had begun slowly to come over me too. So now when Judy called, I found pictures and feelings and thoughts rising spontaneously out of my own awakened poetic side as well. Suddenly in my mind was the image of a man, lonely from loss, sitting in a rocking chair, holding the fragrant dead leaves of a treasured rose potpourri—

Before I could finish telling what I had envisioned, Judy was telling me of—

Well, you will read all about it soon enough!

We finished our conversation. A few minutes later Judy showed up at my office door with the red rose in hand, in a vase for my desk. She sat down and, after we both admired it a while, we began to talk once more.