Summary

Chapter 7

The novel offers a brief glimpse into Rose’s adolescence. She was a middling student in school known not for academics or athletics but because of her way with creating pretty flower arrangements from flowers she fashioned from paper. At her high school graduation, she provided the ornate flower arrangements on the stage, a feat for which her parents made an extraordinary fuss. Now, Rose feels as if she has lost something of her identity. She was now adrift: her disastrous marriage to an alcoholic suicide, her brief stint as a piano player in a movie theater, and now her new marriage to a man whose intimidating brother seemed intent on making her feel unwanted. She wanted to restore her sense of creativity, her identity. She crafted a kind of centerpiece for the entrance way to the ranch house as a surprise...