Jeffery Deaver - Praying for Sleep

This was what horticulturists call a warm greenhouse. Ruth L’Auberget had scattered archaic heaters around the room but they never worked well. It seemed as if the woman was daunted by technology and had been content to let nature and fate decide whether her roses prospered or died. That wasn’t good enough for her daughter. This was after all, Lis reasoned, the computer age, and she had the place outfitted with a microprocessor climate-control system that kept the temperature above sixty-two degrees even on the coldest of nights and operated the automated vents along the roof ’s peak and roller shades on the south-facing panes (sunlight being as potentially dangerous as frost).

On one side of the thirty-five-by-twenty-foot room were the cuttings, rooted in sand, and the seedlings; on the other were the growing plats for mature bushes, and propagation benches. Soil-warming cables snaked under the cutting area, and hoses, trickle-irrigation pipelines and capillary sand benches provided the water. The connected potting area and lath house were floored in concrete; the greenhouse floor itself was gravel, through which wound a serpentine path of slate-also selected by Lis (to replace the original concrete). The slate was deep green-blue and had been picked by Lis as a reminder of a rose yet to be, the L’Auberget hybrid. This was an ambition of hers-to develop a luminescent teal-colored rose, an All-American Rose Selections designation in her name.

The crossbreeding of this flower had a particular appeal because she’d been told it was impossible; fellow rosarians assured her that the elusive color couldn’t be bred. What’s more, she was bucking the trend. The current strategy among growers was to cultivate for fragrance and disease resistance. But color and form, now traits in disrepute, were what excited Lis Atcheson. Logically she appreciated the difficulty of the crossbreed. But the irony is that by nature rose lovers have deep romantic streaks and aren’t easily discouraged. So, working with a number of yellow varieties and pinks and the Blue Moon hybrid tea, Lis spent hours here grafting and budding as if it were merely a matter of time until she found the evasive color.

From literature, Lis had learned the transcendence of the imagination, which she’d come to believe was God’s main prize to us, all things else, even love, being more or less honorable mentions. But from flowers, she learned a better lesson-the persistence of beauty: petals bursting, growing, falling, and curling into dry, colorful flakes.

Roses were more than animate to her; they were virtually human. “Think about it,” she’d tell students of hers invited to the greenhouse for informal Saturday-afternoon horticultural lectures. “The history of roses? They migrated west to Europe and America, mostly from the Orient. Their culture? They grow in increasingly sophisticated social clusters. And how about religion? Roses’ve had as bad a time on that subject as we have. They were burned by early Christians because of pagan-excuse the expression-roots. And then what happened? The Pope converted them. Now, ask a Catholic what roses represent-Mary, of course. That’s the Mother, by the way, not the prostitute.”

Lis’s love of flowers began when she was around nine. Skinny and tall, the girl would herd Portia into the huge backyard, where their mother’s helper presided. The imported au pair would send the girls on missions to find wildflowers of certain colors, after of course delivering the litany of warnings: the lake, snakes, hornets, bees, abandoned wells, strangers, men with candy, on and on. (The caveats were the product of Andrew L’Auberget; no chubby, carefree Dutch girl could possibly find the world so threatening.)

The speech delivered, paranoia invoked, Jolande would then dole out the assignments. “Leesbonne, a golden flur. Breeng me a gold flur.”

Off the children would go.

“Leesbonne, now a red one. A red flur… Be careful of that, how you call it, beehive. Poortia, a red one…”

The girls would charge off into the woods and return with the blossoms. The daughters would then ask the big girl to trim and wash the bouquet and the trio would deliver the works of art to Ruth L’Auberget, who would nod with approval and thank the girls. She would then tie the blossoms into bright arrangements for the rectory office where she spent her afternoons.

This combination of aesthetics and generosity was irresistible to Lis, and she would sit at the dinner table, too timid to speak, but praying that Mother would report to Father about the flowers-or that talkative Portia would blurt the story to him. Impatient with religion, Andrew L’Auberget only managed to tolerate his wife’s involvement in St. John’s (it was, the liquor merchant was fast to joke, her only vice). Still, he usually dispensed some backhanded praise. “Ah, very good. Good for you, Lisbonne. And Portia too. You were careful of thorns and wasps?”

His face was stern but Lis believed she heard pleasure in his voice. “Yes, Father.”

“And don’t run through tall grass. Has our Jolande been careful with you? Broken legs can turn gangrenous very easily. Then off they come. Zip! How about the Reverend Dalcott? He going to snatch you up in a bag and turn you into little Episcopalians?”

“Andrew.”

“No, Daddy. He has yellow teeth and his shirt smells funny.”

“Portia!”

If he was in a good mood, Father might recite some Robert Burns or John Donne. “ ‘O my love’s like a red, red rose…’ ”

Lis harbored a secret belief that the bouquets she’d delivered to her mother had inspired her to build the greenhouse and to start tending roses all year round.

Flowers were what Lis thought about too when her father’s mood grew dark and the inevitable willow whip descended on her exposed buttocks. The image of an orange hybrid seemed somehow to anesthetize much of the pain.

Through the mottled windows she now gazed toward the very tree-a black willow-that had sacrificed hundreds of young shoots so that two daughters might grow into proper women. She could see only a vague form, like an image in a dream. It seemed to be just a lighter version of the darkness that filled the yard tonight.

Lis squinted and gazed past the tree. It was then that she saw a curious shape in the water.

What is that? she wondered.

Walking outside, she looked again-at a portion of the shoreline a hundred yards from the house. It was a configuration of shapes she’d never noticed. Then she understood-the water had risen so far that it was ganging near the top of the old dam. What she was looking at was a white rowboat that had slipped its moorings and floated to the concrete rim. Half the rocky beach beside the dam was obscured. In thirty years, the water had never been this high… The dam! The thought struck Lis like a slap. She’d forgotten completely about the dam. It was of course the lowest spot on the property. If the lake overflowed, the water would fill the low culvert behind it and flood the yard.

Suddenly from her youth she recalled a sluice gate in the dam, operated by a large wheel. Opening this gate diverted the water to a creek that flowed into the Marsden River a mile or so downstream. She recalled her father’s opening the gate once many years ago after a sudden spring thaw. Was it still there? And, if so, did it still work?

Lis walked closer to the house and called, “Portia!”

A second-floor window opened.

“I’m going to the dam.”

The young woman nodded and looked up at the sky. “I just heard a bulletin. They’re calling it the storm of the decade.”

Lis nearly joked that she’d picked a fine night for a visit but thought better of it. Portia eased the window shut and continued her methodical taping. Lis walked cautiously into the culvert that led to the dam and, plunging into darkness, picked her way along the rocky creek bed.