Her Name Is Rose by Christine Breen Read Free Book Online Page A

sipped their tea, feeling somewhat relieved that perhaps the “distortion” was a thing of nothing, just as the doctor had said. Iris then showed Tess the sketch she was working on.
    â€œNot bad, pet. Not bad at all. You’re a constant surprise, Iris. Really. I’m in awe of you.”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œReally. No, it’s good.” Tess reached across the table and squeezed Iris’s hand. “You know, I’m really proud of you. What with the uncertainty of your job at the paper and now this. You’re handling it so well.”
    Iris got up and faced her friend and, as if rising to the occasion that all would be just fine, she stretched the back of her neck straight up and stood firm. “Anyway, it’s not like I have cancer. Sure it’s not? I’m just going back for a second mammogram and ultrasound. To be sure. End of story … maybe a biopsy.”
    â€œAbsolutely.” Tess knit her brows.
    â€œBut I can tell you for nothing, I am a little nervous.” She relaxed her stretch and started to clear the table.
    â€œDon’t be. Let me be nervous for you.”
    Iris nodded, feeling the genuine warmth from her friend.
    â€œAnd I promised Luke I’d look after you. And a promise is a promise is a promise,” Tess said.
    Suddenly, Iris was looking at Tess as if she’d just seen a ghost walk past, as if it wasn’t Tess who was speaking.
    â€œIris? What is it?”
    Iris turned away. “Nothing.” She went to the sink and put the teacups in and washed them. Until that moment Iris had kept the words “promise” and “Luke” well apart from each other. Ever since that horrible afternoon toward the end when Luke had asked her to promise, she’d closeted that word, locking it away in the farthest cupboard of her mind. There had been too much to do just to get on with living. Anytime she’d revisited the moment when he’d reached across and grasped her arm and said he didn’t want Rose to be alone, she thought, She isn’t alone. I’m here! But now, hearing the word “promise” and thinking of her appointment, she felt suddenly cold, like an iceberg had melted and pulled her down in its freezing chill. Had Luke glimpsed some dark future? Had he known something?
    A year had come and gone. And another. He who was living is now dead , the poet wrote. With each passing month she’d let herself forget what he’d asked and began to believe he’d only “wished” it to himself, and she’d merely overheard it. In the weeks and months after his death she hadn’t thought of anything but getting through. She’d had to take care of things, figure out things, learn how to do the dozens of things Luke had always done. And she did do everything she was expected to do. Tidied up his papers. Wrote thank-you notes. Sent memorial cards with his picture. Settled with the solicitor and executor. Squared away the insurance for Rose and got her through and off to London.
    And now, what if ?
    What if you were in that most delicate and tender part of your life as a gifted young musician just lifting your bow to add to the beauty of the world and suddenly not only was your father dead but your mother, too? What music would be left to you then? Luke and Iris were “only” children. Iris’s parents had died within a few years of each other when she was thirty. Luke’s parents, too, were both dead. His mother had a stroke and died shortly after and his father lived out the rest of his life in a nursing home in Monkstown, overlooking the sea. Luke had visited him as often as he could, even after his father no longer recognized him.
    Rose was too young, too talented, too vulnerable to be parentless.
    She had no one else.
    â€œAre you all right? Pet?”
    Iris determined right then and there, in the middle of the kitchen with her head pounding, her left breast with a