“Her name was June.”

The next line said she was buried near Lincoln. Then: “I sent the rose because I wanted you to know I remembered her.” The last line was, “I should have asked you to come.”

I read it twice. On the second pass, I stopped at the word *asked*. Cason was still behind me in the hall. Shonna stood on the porch, looking at the card instead of at either of us.

“June,” I said.

Shonna nodded. “That was her name.”

“You knew?”

“I knew he had named her June. He told me about her. I didn’t know if you knew.”

I looked down at the card. I had spent years thinking the rose was Wells reaching for me, or trying to keep me looking backward. I had not once thought that he might have been sending it for the person we had never managed to talk about.

Cason came closer, but he did not touch me. “Hol, I didn’t know.”

“Neither did I,” I said.

Shonna shifted the rose from one hand to the other. “He asked me to bring it myself. He said he didn’t want you to think it was just another flower from the florist.”

“You thought I was encouraging him,” I said.

“I did.” She lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

There were things I could have said back. I could have reminded her that she had stopped me in a parking lot and told me to throw the roses away.

I had done exactly that, every year. But she was standing there carrying the last one, and my husband was behind me telling me he would leave if I let myself be pulled into an old marriage.

I kept the card flat against the doorframe.

“Did he tell you where she is?” I asked.

“Yes. I went with him once. I can take you.”

Cason let out a breath through his nose. “Shonna, this is a lot to put on her at the door.”

“He asked me to bring the rose,” Shonna said. “I didn’t want to come without telling her what it meant.”

“You could have told us that before the card,” Cason said.

“I could have,” she answered. “I’m sorry. I was afraid she wouldn’t read it if I explained first.”

That was not a very good excuse. She knew it, judging by the way she pressed her mouth together afterward. Still, she had done what Wells asked. The person who had written the note was dead, and there was no way to ask him why he had waited until then to say the rest.

Cason looked at the card. “You’re going to go?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Hol.”

“I’ve only just read it.”

He glanced toward the porch, then back at me. “I said what I said because I thought he was trying to get between us.”

“He didn’t call me. He didn’t send a card for twenty-two years.”

“I know.”

“No, you know there was a rose. You didn’t know what it was for.”

Cason rubbed his thumb across the edge of the doorframe. “I thought he wanted you to keep thinking about him.”

“So did I.”

That answer seemed to leave him with nowhere useful to go. His face changed, not dramatically, just enough that I could see he had heard the part I meant.

Shonna asked if she could come inside. I stepped back to let her in. The three of us stood in the hall, with the rose and the card between us. Cason looked uncomfortable, and I understood why. He had been afraid of being made a fool in his own marriage. I had used his jealousy as evidence that I should keep the roses out of sight, though I had never told him the part that frightened me most: that every year I wondered whether Wells had buried our daughter somewhere I could not find.

“I never asked where she was,” I said.

Shonna didn’t rush to answer.

“I couldn’t ask when I was in the hospital,” I said. “Then he said he’d tell me when I was ready. I kept not being ready. And after the divorce, I thought asking would mean reopening everything.”

Cason said, “You don’t have to decide today.”

“I know.”

He looked at me carefully. “I meant it when I said I was done.”

“I heard you.”

“I was angry.”

“You were serious, too.”

He didn’t deny it. “I was. I thought I was watching you go back to him.”

“There isn’t a him to go back to.”

“I know that now.”

The words were ordinary. They didn’t repair the way he had spoken to me, and I didn’t want to pretend they did. But he had come into the hall expecting a fight about the roses. Now he was looking at the card, trying to understand what he had missed.

Shonna said, “Wells didn’t tell me everything about your marriage. I never asked him to. I knew he loved you when you were young, and I knew you had both lost a baby. I thought the rose was his way of keeping a claim on you.”

“Why didn’t you ask him?” Cason said.

“I did ask,” she replied. “He said it wasn’t a claim. He wouldn’t say more than that.”

“What did he say it was?”

“He said, ‘It’s for Hollie.’ I thought that was all the answer I was going to get.”

Shonna paused, then added, “I was jealous. I’m not proud of it.”

There it was, without much defense around it. I could have held on to the old insult because it would have been easy. Instead I looked at the woman who had come to my house in a gray coat with her eyes swollen from grief, carrying a flower her husband had sent for me. She had misread the roses. So had I.

“Did he go to June’s grave every year?” I asked.

“Yes. He told me he went in April. I didn’t know the exact day until he asked me to bring this.”

“Did he leave a rose there?”

“I don’t know. I never asked him that.”

I looked at the rose in its clear plastic. It was the same kind I had taken out to the trash for years. I had imagined it sitting there as proof of his refusal to let go. Now I was ashamed of how easily I had assigned him a motive when I had never asked him either.

Cason moved toward the living room, then stopped. “If you go, I’ll go with you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know. I want to.”

“You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

“I’m not trying to.” He looked down at the card. “I don’t want you going by yourself because I made this harder.”

I watched him for a moment. “I’m not going to promise that the roses meant nothing.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“And I’m not going to pretend I didn’t wonder about him.”

He nodded, once. “All right.”

That was as close as we got to settling the old argument. It was enough for that afternoon. I folded the note carefully and put it back in its envelope. I did not throw it away.

Shonna had a small card with the cemetery’s name and directions. She had brought it in her purse because she thought I might want to go, though she said she had not been sure she could offer. She set it beside Wells’s note. The two pieces of paper made the answer more solid than anything we had said aloud.

“Would you come with me?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

“Not today,” Cason said. He sounded less like he was forbidding it and more like he was asking me to take a breath. “You’ve had a lot handed to you in ten minutes.”

I looked at him. “I want to go soon.”

“Then soon,” he said.

The next time we met, Shonna drove. Cason came with me. I brought the note, not because I expected to need it, but because I wanted Wells’s words there with me. I had spent a long time avoiding the question of where our daughter was. I didn’t want to arrive without knowing what I was going to say.

The cemetery was quiet. Shonna walked ahead, then stopped and waited for us to catch up. She didn’t take my arm or try to direct me by the shoulder. I was grateful for that. Cason stayed close without speaking. He had been trying not to crowd me since we left the house.

When we reached the grave, the name on the marker was June.

I stood and read it. I had never known the name. I had not known what the stone looked like, or exactly where Wells had laid her, or how to find her. The worst part was that all those years I had believed the questions were impossible to ask. They had been difficult. That was not the same thing.

Shonna remained a little behind us. “He came here,” she said, “but he didn’t talk much while he was here.”

I looked at her. “Did he say anything about me?”

“Sometimes he said he hoped you were all right. He never asked me to contact you.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he thought that would be unfair. Maybe he thought you had made your choice.” She hesitated. “I should have asked him more. I didn’t want to be the wife who kept bringing up his first marriage.”

I understood that, though it did not make the years any easier to place. She had protected her marriage from a story she did not understand. I had protected mine by throwing away the roses. Wells had stayed silent because he believed I was not ready, or because he could not bring himself to ask. No one had meant to leave June alone. We had just kept handing the question back and forth.

Cason stood beside me, looking down at the marker. “I’m sorry I said I was done.”

I did not answer right away.

“I don’t want to be the person who makes you choose between me and a memory,” he said. “I thought that was what the rose was asking you to do.”

“It wasn’t.”

“I see that.”

I slipped the note from its envelope and read the four lines again. The card did not tell me what Wells had felt in every year between the first rose and his death. It didn’t tell me why he had never asked me to come. It told me what he had chosen to say at the end, and that was all I had.

“June,” I said aloud.

Cason didn’t reach for me. He just stood beside me and let me say it.

Shonna lowered her eyes. “I’m glad you know now.”

I folded the note and put it away. Then I stayed a while longer. I did not have a speech for my daughter. I said her name once more, and that was enough for then.

The next April, I kept the rose. Cason knew why. Shonna didn’t have to bring it, and she didn’t. I went to June’s grave with Cason beside me, carrying no explanation for anyone else.

I had her name now. I could go back.