The only time Louise ever takes flowers out of the small shop she owns is when she's going to St. Catherine's cemetery to visit her husband and daughter. The white star asters belong to Howard and yellow roses are Carolyn's, but all the others are for customers. Except she isn’t thinking about customers right now, as she's standing here looking out the plate-glass store front at a young woman with a bruised face waiting for a bus across the street. She's thinking about Carolyn, who she can feel standing silently at her elbow. She’s never grown out of this mother’s habit, watching from a distance like this. Howard used to tease her for peering out from between the living room curtains to check on their daughter, who would have been playing hopscotch or turning cartwheels on the front lawn.

    Howard had been a hard-working man, a carpenter whose rough hands provided a warm house full of love. Louise never went out to work like many of the neighbors’ wives did, preferring the scent of bread baking in her kitchen to the sweaty closeness of a side-street dressmaker’s shop or the greasy reek of a factory. She raised their daughter as well as her eleventh-grade education permitted and tended a small garden instead. She had been kneeling in the garden, in fact, when she got the news of Howard’s heart attack. Her fingers had been cradling the crumbling soil that surrounded some plant’s fragile roots and Charlie, Howard’s partner, had just pulled into the driveway in his battered green pickup. His heavy work boot pawed nervously at the grass as he told her the news; she had wiped soil all over her cheeks trying to hide her tears.

    Carolyn was sixteen then, and Howard’s death brought them closer; but love couldn’t pay the mortgage. Late one evening, as she sat at the kitchen table mulling over bills, Louise let her forehead fall into her hands and almost resolved to let the bank take away their home. She wanted to be away from it, this house where she had made so many memories with Howard, when it hurt so much to think of him now. For the first time in her life, she wished she could sew; as it was, no respectable dressmaker would ever hire her.

    The next morning, as she knelt in the garden, Louise could feel Carolyn watching her from the front porch where she sat reading. She removed one garden glove so as not to dirty the white handkerchief she used to wipe perspiration from her forehead. "What is it, Carolyn?"

    Her daughter pushed a rogue strand of hair behind her ear and smiled in her usual carefree way. "The sun is shining through your hat brim and making a funny pattern on the grass," she laughed. Louise smiled too and, adjusting her straw hat, turned back to her trowel. A moment later, Carolyn continued, "You look just right in the garden, Mother. You should open a flower shop."

    At first Louise shook her head, but she found herself telling the story to her friends and family; when even her miserly brother Gerald approved the plan, her mind was made up. She marched straight to the bank and borrowed against the rest of the money Howard had left her.

    Inside her tiny store, her deft fingers arranging fragile blossoms, Louise rediscovered her likewise fragile passion for life that had almost been crushed by the loss of her husband.

    The business itself floundered for the first few years, and upon Carolyn's graduation from high school their finances were too scanty to permit college. "Don't worry, Mother," Carolyn had smiled breezily; "They’re giving me a scholarship." When she wasn’t studying, Carolyn was waiting tables at the student union - for job experience, she said. It wasn’t until the third year that Louise discovered there was no scholarship after all; Carolyn had taken on a hefty loan to finance her education without burdening her mother. By this time the flower shop had begun to turn a tidy profit, and Louise was determined to pay off the loan. Although Carolyn had protested at first, she relented when her mother said, "If you don’t let me do this, dear, I’m going to rename the shop ‘Carolyn’s.’" They had had a good laugh and a cup of tea, and from then on Louise wrote the checks that paid off the college loan.

    Time melted away after Carolyn’s graduation. Her new job was in a nearby town, but it kept her too busy for much more than phone calls and the occasional Saturday afternoon visit. Louise was not unhappy, though; she spent her time planning wedding flowers. Carolyn’s boyfriend, Daniel, had proposed to her on her twenty-sixth birthday.

    Not four months later, Louise stood at her front door in her housecoat in the middle of the night, staring in disbelief at the police officer who had come to tell her that Carolyn was dead. Daniel had been fatally injured in an accident, what was left of the interior of his car reeking of alcohol. When the police had gone to the apartment he had shared with Carolyn, they found her beaten and lifeless body curled on the living room floor. The last time Louise saw her daughter was at the hospital, but she arrived too late to even kiss Carolyn goodbye. Her face was so battered Louise could find no trace of the lighthearted, cheerful little girl she had raised.

    Louise was fifty-eight when she buried her child. She later learned that Carolyn had not been busy with work, but rather had not come to see her mother because she was ashamed of the bruises Daniel would frequently leave on her. "He threw her around a good part of the two years they were together," the police officer assigned to the case told Louise, perhaps thinking it would help her to know the truth. He seemed uncomfortable at her tears and averted his eyes while pushing a box of tissues towards her across his desk.

    The three years since Carolyn's death have been desolate ones for Louise, but the flower shop has done much to carry her through the hardship. She sold the house a few months ago - too many ghosts live there. She goes to visit Howard and Carolyn every first Sunday after mass, but she tries not to remember too much. It hurts less to kneel on the soft cemetery turf, arranging white star asters and yellow roses on their graves. A painter is coming to the shop tomorrow, though, to splash the word ‘Carolyn’s’ across the plate-glass front window.

    Now, as she watches the young woman across the street, memories flood around her as if someone has upset a watering can. The stranger's slight form is wrapped in a grey hooded sweatshirt with frayed cuffs, and her hair is an artificial shade of auburn. Her pale face, which is most likely pretty, is too sunken with exhaustion and pain for Louise to tell for sure. She has been crying.

    Aimee is hunched over on the curb several blocks from her apartment building. There’s no bench or even a bus shelter, so she’s sitting on the crumbling curb. She’s too tired to stand up. The bags she’s carrying are heavier than she’d thought.

    Her fingers mechanically wander to her cheek, absentmindedly pressing the sore place. She winces. Her one consolation is that the dark circles under her eyes are probably so dark that no one can really tell that she’s working on a shiner. She yawns a little, which makes her face smart and tears well in her eyes. The bus will be here soon, though, and then she can sleep. ‘Just hold out until then,’ she tells herself. She’s been awake for twenty-five and a half hours now.

    Steve, the guy who loved SoCo more than he loved Aimee, had come in late last night. He filled their small apartment with the reek of alcohol and cigarettes, plus an extra special stink all his own - the sour smell of sweat sealed inside the leather jacket he always wore. He liked to feel tough and he liked to be in charge, so when Aimee brushed away his groping hands, it made him angry. The first thing he did was hit her across the face. When it was over, he hovered, smirking, over her as she huddled crying on the floor.

    "Remember who’s boss now?" he slurred.

    Aimee’s thin fingers clung to the remains of her thin tank top, pressing it to her breast. He had torn the straps in the struggle, and only her trembling hands held it in place now. "You can’t treat me this way," she whispered raggedly, helplessly aware that she was lying. He could. He had.

    His belt buckle jingled as he buttoned up his pants. "You need to learn that what I say, goes," he muttered.

    "You’re drunk," she choked out, her voice a cross between a bark and a sob.

    "Still don’t know how to shut up," he muttered, retrieving his keys and wallet from the coffee table where he’d dropped them upon coming in. "I’m goin’ to Mike’s."

    "I’m leaving," Aimee whimpered softly as he turned towards the door.

    He looked back over his shoulder to where she still crouched on the floor. His expression made her feel like he’d kicked her in the stomach, although he’d aimed most of his blows at her face. "Haven’t you said that before?" he sneered. The door closing behind him clanged like prison cell bars. It was almost 12:30.

    Aimee had lain on the floor for almost forty-five minutes, waiting - waiting to see if Steve was really going, waiting until her heart slowed enough for her to breathe, waiting to see if she was brave enough to get up off the floor and pack her things. She was. Her side hurt a little as she pulled a suitcase out of her closet, and after inspecting the tender skin she knew she’d have a bad bruise in the morning. Maybe she’d cracked a rib when she fell to the hardwood floor. It didn’t matter - she’d had worse. She opened the Samsonite and carefully folded the clothes she placed into it, not believing her own lucidity. Women who reach this point were supposed to try to stuff all of their earthly belongings into one small bag, then collapse crying when it wouldn’t close. They didn’t pack with such calculation, careful consideration of what they’d need and what he’d destroy if they left it behind. But these weren’t women like Aimee. She always was one to get things done, even if it meant stripping to support her habits (soft drugs and freeloading men), or lying about her previous employment and criminal record to get a new job. She’d been clean for eleven months now, and compared to her old "career," answering phones in a stuffy office building felt like heaven.

    By 3am, she’d assembled the Samsonite, a duffel bag, and a backpack near the door. By 5:30, she had filled a large box with the remainder of her important personal items. Mrs. Watson, an older lady who lived next door, rose at 6; Aimee could hear her shuffling around in her apartment through the thin plaster walls. She would knock on Mrs. Watson’s door later and ask if she would keep the box for a while; she knew she would. Mrs. Watson had once given Aimee fifty dollars just for feeding her balding old cat while she visited her daughter in Sacramento. She was a generous old lady, the kind Aimee never told the truth to when asked about her occupation.

    According to the transit company’s voice recording, the first bus to the airport would stop just a few blocks away at 8:55. Aimee flipped on the TV, paced back and forth between the couch and the living room window, anything to keep her mind occupied. She didn’t dare fall asleep. If Steve came back and she was sleeping... well, she didn’t want to think about it. Although she knew he was probably passed out on his friend Mike’s living room rug, it wasn’t a chance she was willing to take.

    And now it’s 8:48, and the bus that will be here soon will take her to the airport 27 miles away. Aimee pulls her beat-up leatherette address book out of her back pocket and stares at the page she’s marked with a paperclip. On the left - a coincidence, really - is the address of her mother, Jane, in Cincinnati; she and Aimee haven’t spoken in three years, ever since Aimee told her what she’d been doing for a living. On the right are several cancelled out addresses followed by the current phone number for her sister Dana and her new husband Ross in St. Louis. They’ve only been living there for a few weeks and Aimee doesn’t even know their new address, but she’s hoping they’ll let her stay with them for a little while. If they don’t, she doesn’t know what she's going to do.

    Louise's chest is so tight she can barely breathe. If she suffered from asthma or angina, she might have taken little notice of it, but there is nothing wrong with her. This young woman even looks nothing like Carolyn, who was blond, slim, always laughing; it’s something in her averted face will not let Louise look away, something other than the bruises. Louise's fingernails bite into her palm as she wonders if that broken expression ever crossed her daughter's face.

    Countless hundreds of times, as her rosary beads clacked together softly in the muted atmosphere of St. Catherine's church, Louise had prayed for the strength to not blame herself. I could not have stopped it, she repeated to herself, hoping that the words would begin to feel true; I did nothing wrong. The first year had been unbearable, every thought running through her head an "if only." She had realized the selfishness of wishing for a second chance, some final opportunity to prove herself. She loved her daughter. The rest was in the hands of God.

    But as she stares at this young woman, she knows that this moment is in her hands.

    Her right hand shakes as it wields her florist's shears; hardly realizing it, she is stripping the thorns off the stem of a yellow rose. She feels slow and deliberate, almost as if she were moving through water, as she steps toward the door.

    The tinkling of bells from across the street makes Aimee turn her head. The sound had come from the door of the flower shop almost directly opposite where she sat on the curb, but she was not taking in the shop itself. The woman coming towards her seizes her attention and suddenly Aimee cannot see anything else; all other details fade out of notice. Her dress is calf-length, grey, with small white dots. Her sensible tan shoes are like a nurse's, gathered along the toes, with thick rubber soles.

    The world seems to hold its breath as Louise bends to Aimee's level, and for a moment the two women simply regard each other, saying nothing. Then Louise extends her hand and presses the yellow rose into Aimee's hand, seemingly heedless of the cracked and bloody cuticles as she curls the younger woman's fingers around the stem.

    "I don't know you," Louise breathes, "and I don't know your story ... but you looked as though you needed this."

    Aimee looks down at the flower in amazement, gently fingers its velvety petals. Her eyes are filling with tears that she can't explain as she raises them again to look into Louise's face

. "Don't cry anymore," she says, gently placing her worn palm on Aimee's knee. "Make the start of your journey a strong one. And, wherever you end up ... " Louise falters, looks down at the nubbly blacktop. Aimee peers at her, astounded, moved, fascinated. She places her own hand atop Louise's, feels the never-unfamiliar sensation of dry aging skin.

    Louise is somehow revitalized by Aimee's touch, and looks her straight in the face. Her voice trembles faintly. "... wherever you end up, just be sure to call your mother and tell her you're all right."

    The bus rumbles mundanely into this surreal scene. Aimee boards without looking back, but as the bus pulls away Louise sees her sitting near a window, the soft yellow rose petals resting gently against her dry, cracked lips. Their eyes cling to each other for one moment more, but as the bus groans away the tie is broken.

    At 9:57 am, a young woman with a bruised face and a single yellow rose cradled in her right hand approaches the airline desk. The agent, consciously overlooking her shiner, smiles. "Good morning," she says cheerfully. "How can I help you?"

    Aimee almost smiles back as she inquires about the next available flight to Cincinnati.