Laura blinked back tears and held her daughter’s tiny hand. She glanced across the cemetery, her fragmented thoughts swirling in variegated images of the last days she’d spent with her husband. A movement in the neighboring pine trees caught her eye. A man stood in the thicket and watched the funeral. Laura wondered if he was one of their friends. Maybe someone who’d rather grieve alone, a friend who preferred to keep in the background. But all of their mutual friends were here. She wasn’t sure, but it appeared he lifted a pair of binoculars to his face. The Reverend Simmons eulogy was now a faint soundtrack in her mind, lost in the warble of blue jay calls, soft sobbing, and the sound of a horse trailer passing by on the country road.

Laura swallowed dryly, glanced down at her daughter. Five seconds later, when she looked back toward the woods, the man was gone.

After forty-five minutes, most of the mourners had left the cemetery. Less than a dozen cars remained in the parking lot lined with large moss-draped oak and palm trees. Cardinals and wrens competed in song with choral chirrups and warbles. Laura and little Paula walked Jack Jordan’s mother and father to their parked Lincoln. There were long hugs and warm tears as they said their goodbyes, Laura’s mother-in-law promising that she would stop over tomorrow to visit and bring some more pictures of Jack when he was a boy. Laura nodded, thanked them, and then took Paula by the hand, walking across the hot cemetery parking lot to their car.

A shiny new Ford pickup truck was in the space beside Laura’s car. A man wearing dark clothes, approached the truck, coming from the direction of Jack’s grave. Cory Nelson smiled at Laura and Paula. Nelson, tall, broad shoulders, military haircut, removed his sunglasses and said, “I was just giving Jack my final farewell. How you holding up now, Laura?”

Laura glanced down at Paula. “It’s going to be hard without him.”

Nelson nodded. “I’m always here for you and Paula. I never thought I’d see a day like this. Jack was just…he was just larger than this life in everything he did.” Nelson leaned down and hugged Paula. “You take care of your mama, okay”

“Okay, Uncle Cory.”

He touched her cheek with the tips of his fingers and stood just as a car engine started. It was at the far side of the lot. The last car, a gray BMW sedan, windows tinted. Laura watched Nelson’s eyes following the car. There was the no hint of recognition. Laura turned to look at who was leaving. She could barely make out a Scottish tweed hat pulled low. The driver wore dark glasses and didn’t slow or wave. Windows up. Identity sealed. She thought about the man she’d spotted at the edge of the woods during Jack’s service. She looked up at Nelson. “Who was that?”

He placed his sunglasses back on. “I couldn’t make out his face. Maybe someone Jack knew.” Laura could see the reflection of the car in the curved lens of the dark glasses, the automobile extending like a stretch limousine, somehow strange and incompatible with the lyrical sounds of birdsong in the oak trees. Over Nelson’s wide shoulders, high above a distant field of wildflowers, Laura saw black carrion birds riding the air currents, circling the smell of death below the deep blue sky.

Max scampered down L dock a few feet in front of O’Brien. He carried the file folder in one hand. He paused to watch a forty-three-foot Viking inch into its slip, diesels gurgling in the marina water, two laughing gulls flying above the boat. A man in wrap-around mirrored sunglasses stood at the wheel adjusting the bow thrusters. Another man in swim shorts and a Miami Dolphins tank top stepped to the rear of the transom, tossing a line to a waiting boat owner standing on the dock. Max barked once, welcoming the fishermen’s return, and then trotting toward the end of the pier, head held high.

Kim was already there, sitting at a round table on the cockpit with Dave and Nick. O’Brien could see the rose in the center of the table, paper plates, cheese and a bottle of wine. Dave looked up and said, “Sean and Miss Max, welcome aboard. Kim brought the floral arrangement. Nick delivered a half-bushel of stone crab claws on ice. And I’m breaking out a couple of bottles of chardonnay I’ve been chilling.”

Nick grinned. “I brought a gallon of Kalama olives, a pound of feta cheese, and some pita bread. C’mon, hot dog, join Uncle Nicky in the galley.”

Max scurried up and down the steps leading to the cockpit, following Nick into the salon and down to the galley. O’Brien took a seat at the table, set the folder down, looked at the rose and said, “I’ve seen a rose like that.”

Dave nodded. “They’re in southern states, mostly.”

Kim said, “I’m wondering if I’ve seen them on graves.”

Dave leaned forward, moving his glass of wine. “Kim, you have every reason to be bitter about this unscheduled and somewhat dark delivery. However, after I did some research, I discovered a curious history connected to this species of rose. And, of course, it has a direct bearing on why the sender chose it.”

Kim folded her arms, a breeze across the water tossing her hair. She attempted a meager smile. “History? I’d like to see into the future — a future without this guy bringing me flowers and weird notes.”

Nick returned with a large platter filled with cracked stone crab claws on a bed of chipped ice. He set the food on the table. “Eat! Me and my gal pal, Max, already started.” Max sat down near Nick’s bare feet.

Dave reached for an olive and said, “First, it’s not really a rose, although it’s been labeled as such for years. This is a southern flower that’s more of a hibiscus than a rose. Nonetheless, it’s steeped in Old South tradition. It’s called a Confederate rose and carries quite a legend with it. When it first blooms, the petals are as white as cotton. But as it goes through the blooming cycle, the petals begin to turn pink and then finally red before the bloom withers and dies.”

O’Brien slid the vase and rose a little closer to him. He studied it for a few seconds. “What’s the history or the legend?”

“The flower is said to embody the dying spirit of a young Confederate soldier. As the story goes, the soldier, wounded from battle, was said to have fallen upon the flower trying to return home. He bled over the course of two days, some of his blood covering the petals. And then he died. These roses, if you will, sort of follow the birth and death process with the color changes. And after that, the term Confederate rose was used extensively from the end of the Civil War through today. Many of the Civil War veterans returning to the state of Alabama were greeted with these roses.”

Nick dipped the meat of a stone crab claw into a spicy mustard sauce. He said, “Sean, slide that vase back to the center of the table. I don’t want to stop and smell the rose, at least not that one.”

O’Brien held the vase, examining the rose, then set in back in the center of the table. He said, “Where’s the card or note the guy left?”

Kim reached for her purse, opened it, and removed the single white note card. “I read this to Dave and Nicky earlier.” She handed it to O’Brien.

He read it aloud, “‘Miss Kim, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But this rose is different. Its changing color represents Confederate blood. It is a beautiful flower, as you are a beautiful woman.’” O’Brien glanced at the rose.

Dave said, “The opening is an obvious reference to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In that line, Juliet was suggesting that the names and titles of things don’t matter. It’s what those things really are or are not that matters. So whoever wrote the message to Kim was, perhaps, trying to reinforce Juliet’s words for possibly two reasons: the first is that the Confederate rose doesn’t have a palpable scent, so it really is different from other roses, by any other name. Conceivably, in his mind, as Kim is different from other women. Maybe the sender was simply using an analogy of the changes in the rose to symbolize the birth and death of the Confederacy. In the beginning, the petals are pure and white, slowly changing with time and the elements, the rose gets darker in color, finally dying on the bush.”