"Why the roses?"she asks.

I smile. I was waiting for her to ask me about that. "My mother. Her favorite flowers were roses. She always had them all over the house with the thorns clipped so I wouldn't hurt myself. I told her that I would be sad when she died because all the roses would die with her. So, she gave me a plastic rose and said that as long as I have that rose, she would never be truly gone."

"I guess I wanted to see roses all over your house, too. Maybe because you feel like home."