Her Name Is Rose Read Online Free PDF Page B

be a mother and Luke a father and two would become three. For seventeen years the Bowens were a trio—two flowers and a “fLuke,” Luke had said.
    â€œFluke?” Rose asked when she was old enough to wonder what it meant.
    â€œThat’s right,” Luke would say and wink at Iris. “I’m the odd one out. Did you ever hear of a flower named Luke?” He looked at Rose with his eyebrows raised to their highest and she shook her head. “No, then. As I said, we’re two flowers and a fLuke.” And that’s how it was—until the beginning of that wet summer two years ago when three became two again.
    A pain in Luke’s back had become pancreatic cancer.
    They’d sat in the peach office of the oncologist Dr. Conway. The office was on the second floor of the Limerick Regional Hospital and Iris remembers looking out at the traffic, the buses and cars and taxis, and thinking, This is just a bad dream. A bus stopped and two older women helped each other off. One was wearing a red hat and a black-and-white-checked jacket. Everything was so normal. Middle of a Wednesday afternoon in early March. Blue sky. Spring. A few clouds. But at a tidy desk with a brown folder a voice was saying, “I’m afraid it’s not good news.”
    When they came out to the car park that day Iris couldn’t find the parking ticket and she pulled everything out of her bag, pulled it all out and let it fall on the ground. Check book, old shopping receipts, wallet, a packet of tissues, lipstick, her hairbrush, sunglasses. Loose coins. Everything. A man came up quickly behind them and said, “Here, take mine,” as though he knew all the people coming and going from that particular car park might have just heard, I’m afraid it’s not good news. Maybe by giving her his ticket his news would be better.
    Next came the treatments and the short spells of hope, the urgings of good cheer, visits from neighbors and friends all wanting her to hope for the best. There’s always room for hope, they’d said. Iris had a mania for feeding Luke green leafy vegetables and juicing arugula with lemon and olive oil—good for the liver and pancreas, Tess said. But that passed when he couldn’t eat anymore, when he lost his appetite and became the thin figure with no strength left. Then she tried to feed him applesauce. They nursed him at home and Sheila, a hospice volunteer, came every afternoon. Every day Iris brought something fresh in from the garden. Petals of forget-me-nots, like blue confetti, lay sprinkled on top of his bedside table. The CD player was playing Bach concertos, and then sometimes Luke would ask Rose to put Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on repeat.
    Luke’s health declined quickly. (He hadn’t been feeling well since early December, but hadn’t let on.) Then, one afternoon in the week before he died, he reached for her hand across the cream candlewick bedspread. Iris had looked at him with fear in her eyes that this was the end. But she was surprised by his sudden strength, and briefly, like a sun ray breaking through a storm cloud, a glimmer of hope eased her face.
    â€œLuke?”
    He angled himself up in the bed. He took a moment to moisten his throat, as if the words were hard and dry, and yet he had to say them. The green of his eyes had deepened. “Luke? What is it?”
    â€œIris … after me. If anything happens to you—”
    â€œStop. Nothing is going to happen to me. Lie back.”
    â€œIris. Listen … I—”
    â€œNo.”
    The pressure of his fingers on her hand tightened.
    â€œListen to me. Please. I don’t want Rose to be alone.”
    Iris turned to look away out the window, tilted back the tears, and held her mouth tightly.
    â€œYou … need to make sure that doesn’t happen. Iris, you … have to explore all possibilities.