The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

“Well, then,” Bessie asked reasonably, “why not a pillow?”


With a sigh, Charlie reached for the paper she was holding. “Okay. Let me have a look at these ‘symbols’ of yours.” He squinted down at Miss Rogers’ copy for a minute, then went to his desk, picked up a pair of metal-rimmed glasses, and hooked them over his ears. He came back to the counter and studied the paper a moment longer as Bessie held her breath. There were no sounds other than the hollow tick-tock of the old wooden clock on the wall.

At last he put the paper down on the counter, his forehead wrinkled. “Where’d you say you got this?”

Bessie let out her breath and repeated what she’d already told him. “My friend has a pillow that she inherited from her grandmother. It has these symbols embroidered on it, on both sides. She copied all of them.”

“How old is your friend?” He frowned. “Not being nosy, just trying to get some kind of historical fix on this stuff, whatever it is.”

“To tell the truth, I don’t know how old she is, exactly. But her age doesn’t matter. Her grandmother’s initials and the date are right there.” She pointed to the very bottom of the page.

“Yes, I saw them.” Charlie bent closer, peering at the paper. “Rose,” he read aloud. “July 21, 1861.” He looked up, frowning a little. “What did you say your friend’s name is? Or, more to the point, what was her grandmother’s name?”

“My friend was an orphan,” Bessie replied. “Her papers were lost at the orphanage and she never knew her family name. All she knew was that her grandmother’s name was Rose. The pillow belonged to her—to her grandmother, I mean.”

To Bessie, who loved to spend time digging into Darling’s history and researching genealogies, not knowing the family name seemed like a very great tragedy, akin to waking up in an utterly strange place and not being able to remember where you were or how in the world you got there. She herself had uncovered some truly horrifying secrets about her own family, and particularly about her father, but she still cherished his name, because it connected her with a family past. She couldn’t imagine how Miss Rogers could have endured it all those years, not knowing who her people were.

“The pillow was the only thing she had that belonged to her family,” she added. “It had a cover on it, a knitted cover, which had never been removed—until Saturday, that is. The cover was pulled off, unraveled, actually, by accident. My friend had never seen those symbols before.”

“Anything else?” Charlie prodded.

Bessie thought. “Well, her mother’s name was Rose, too,” she said slowly. “My friend remembers her mother telling her that her grandmother was a very brave woman. She drowned, apparently.”

“She drowned?” Charlie repeated. He pursed his lips and pushed them in and out, frowning as if he were trying to grasp an elusive memory.

“That’s what my friend remembers.” She looked back at the paper lying on the counter. “Do you think those symbols mean anything?” She almost hated to ask the next question, because she was afraid he would laugh at her. “Do you think they might really be some sort of secret code?”

“I doubt it,” he said. But he didn’t laugh. “They are certainly curious, I’ll say that much.” He straightened up. “You’re not in a tearing hurry for an answer, are you?”

“A hurry?” she answered with a chuckle. “That pillow has been lying around for nearly seventy years. I doubt if a few more days is going to make any difference in the scheme of things.”

He nodded. “Well, then, if you’ll leave this with me, I’ll do a little research on it and see what I can find out.” He lifted his hand in a warning gesture. “Don’t get your hopes up, Bessie.”

“I won’t,” Bessie said. She smiled. “Thank you, Charlie. I was afraid . . . I was afraid you’d think I’m being pretty silly about this.”

“Oh, I do,” Charlie said with a shrug that was meant to look careless. “But I get pretty silly sometimes, too—when it comes to things I’m interested in.” He paused for a moment, shifting his weight uncomfortably. “I guess you saw Angelina Biggs rushing out of here as you came in.”

“I did,” Bessie said. She smiled wryly. “She nearly bowled me over, in fact.”

He paused again, as if he were fishing for words. This hesitation was so totally unlike Charlie Dickens that Bessie was surprised. Finally, he said something entirely unexpected, in a voice that was almost tentative. “Afraid she was a little upset. But I want you to know I had nothing to do with it, Bessie.”

Nothing to do with it? Why should Charlie think that she would think he had something to do with Angelina’s hasty, blundering exit?