Where the Last Rose Blooms by Ashley Clark

Author:Ashley Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction;FIC042100;FIC042040;FIC074000
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2021-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

The first thing Aunt Charlotte did when they got back to Alice’s house was to open Alice’s father’s letter.

That worried Alice.

Because Aunt Charlotte was usually all about the shoulds and should-nots of etiquette, and opening other people’s private notes was definitely a should not.

Aunt Charlotte must have thought she would find answers there.

And she must have found them. Because moments into reading the letter, she slid with her back against the cabinets, all the way to the floor, and she started shaking.

The wind whipped hard now against the home, and Alice heard several trees snap all around them. “I knew we shouldn’t have moved to this city,” she murmured. “Your mother and your father and you, and me . . .”

Alice made eye contact with Aunt Charlotte, who simply shook her head. She held up the letter in her hand. “I don’t know how to tell you this. She’s gone, Alice.”

Alice tightened the belt around her purple robe, yesterday’s clear mascara stinging her eyes. “What do you mean . . . gone?”

Aunt Charlotte swallowed, then bit her lip. “I think the best way of saying it is that she . . . well . . . she’s sick, Alice, in her heart and in her mind, and it’s making her confused. She thought your dad was coming home last night, apparently. That you wouldn’t be alone.”

“But I don’t understand. She left all this bread.” Alice pointed to the counter.

Why would she buy all that bread if she didn’t care about Alice anymore?

She loved Alice.

Sure, her mom had been sad ever since she was pregnant and lost the baby. That was no secret, though she tried to hide it—crying under the covers in her room every day.

But she loved Alice, and Alice loved her.

Why would she do this?

Please let her be okay, Alice prayed, because it was all she felt like she could manage. Please let her be okay. Please let her be okay.

Eventually, Hurricane Katrina did pass, and the weeks and months passed too.

Alice never saw her mother again.

And on one particular afternoon, her aunt Charlotte—who she now lived with since her father had to work weeks at a time on the rigs—bought the same type of bread Alice’s mom used to. And Alice looked at it inside of Aunt Charlotte’s house, and she picked it up, and threw it as hard as she could against the kitchen wall.

God had not heard her prayers.

He had left her, if He even existed. He hadn’t cared.

And the truth was, she had spent the last months in denial—believing that maybe God did still see her and maybe He did hear or care.

But this was what it’d come to—despair.

One time when she was really little, Alice had a goldfish that was sick, only she prayed and prayed and prayed over it. The next day, it started eating again, and her daddy said, “Would you look at that? Your prayers must’ve cured her.” And Alice believed him for all that time after.

But what she couldn’t

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