Ororo pushed open the gate to her rose garden, taking a deep breath of the flowers' fragrance before putting on her gloves. The summer storm had blown over, taking with it the heat and humidity of the day, and there was still enough daylight for her to tend to them. She had to tie them up before the weight of the blossoms on the branches torn loose from the trellis broke off.
She clipped off the last piece of twine a little later, and was about to push off her knees when something caught her eye. She reached under a rosebush, ignoring the scratches she accumulated on her arms in the process, and grabbed for the thing she saw. It resisted, and she yanked harder.
She thought it was a scrap of cloth, but when she got it out she saw it was a pale blue ribbon tied around a bundle of rose stems. The storm winds had tossed the bouquet around, and most of the blossoms had lost their petals, but one still remained; a beautiful, fragrant, pure white blossom of the variety called Margaret Merril.
Ororo stared at it, puzzled. She didn't grow this kind of rose in her garden; they were difficult to grow in this soil. Where had it come from? She examined the stem. The cut was fresh, and there was some clear plastic caught on a thorn, as if whoever had left it in her garden had wrapped the stems in plastic. Because of the rain, she couldn't tell if the plastic had had water in it, but she was fairly certain it had. She sat back on her heels, ignoring the rain on the ground that was dampening the knees of her jeans, and regarded the rose curiously. She didn't realize someone was calling her name until Rogue appeared under the trellis. "Hey, sugah, yah forget dinner?" Then she saw the tattered bouquet. "Where'd that come from?"
"I have no idea," Ororo said, standing slowly and dusting her knees off with one hand as she continued to look at the bouquet thoughtfully.
"Could one of the guys be playin' a trick on yah?" Rogue asked, holding the gate open as Ororo drifted through it absently.
"I do not know," Ororo said. Rogue followed the tall African woman into the kitchen.
Ororo studied the ribbon. "It looks like a little girl's hair ribbon," she said, "And it has been used."
"How'd yah know?" Rogue peered at the ribbon.
"There is a crease right here, where there would be if the ribbon were tied around something often." Wondering, Ororo untied the ribbon, separated the broken flowers from the single perfect stem, and opened a cupboard, taking out a small bud vase and putting the rose in it. As she prepared her dish for dinner, she thought about that rose.
She went to sleep with the fragrance of that rose filling her attic room, still wondering where it had come from.
The next day was sunny, but the ground didn't dry out until almost mid-afternoon. Ororo came in from shopping with Jean and Rogue, put her purchases down, and picked up her gardening gloves. She might as well go and do a better job on the climbing roses on the trellis.
She closed the back door and put on her wide-brimmed straw hat. As she rounded the corner of the mansion, she saw the gate swinging open. And as she went up, trying to remember if Rogue had closed it the previous evening, she saw another bouquet sitting on the bench, tied with a pretty lavender ribbon. She hurried across the garden and snatched it up.
There was a tiny scrap of paper tied to the bouquet with the ribbon, and she inspected it carefully. It read, "I'm sorry the others got broken. I didn't know the storm was coming." There was no signature.
They were the same roses as before, the Margaret Merril. There was plastic wrapped around the stem, and the plastic held a small quantity of water. Whoever had left the bouquet obviously wanted her to have them still fresh.
And the plastic was still warm, as if the hands that had brought it here had only just recently left it.
Ororo crossed the garden quickly, scanning the surroundings. Maybe the giver was still here, somewhere, checking to see if she got her gift? But she didn't feel the little prickling feeling one always felt when someone was watching.
Her eyes went down to the bouquet, and then focused on something else, just beside the toe of her shoe; a small footprint in the slightly muddy ground beside the gate. Forgetting everything else, Ororo followed the footprints.
They didn't lead to the mansion, as she expected. These footprints went out through the grassy south lawn, down the slight incline to the lake that bordered Charles's property, and then went around the margin of the lake. Ororo picked up speed, and as she rounded the trunk of the ancient willow that marked the end of Xavier's property, she saw a flash of denim-clad leg and long brown hair. "Wait!" she called.
The figure turned, and Ororo got a fleeting glimpse of wide brown eyes before the legs started carrying their owner away at a much faster pace. Ororo called on her powers and used a small breeze to lift her into the air. The figure was running faster, and Ororo picked up her own speed.
She came to a stop on the top of a grassy hill leading up away from this side of the lake. The figure…a little girl, Ororo now saw…was trying to get up the hill at a run, and wasn't being very successful. "Child, I won't hurt you," she said. "I wanted to thank you for the roses."
The girl looked up, saw Ororo at the top of the hill, and gasped in surprise. Her hands, clutching at clumps of grass to help her up the steep slope, let go, and she slid halfway down the hill before her momentum stopped. Ororo put the bouquet down on the grass and sprang lightly down the hill after the girl, reaching her where she lay on the grass and holding out her hand. "I'm sorry," she said gently. 'Did I startle you?"
"Kind of," the girl said, pushing herself up without Ororo's assistance. She stood for a second, eyes glued to the ground shyly, twisting her fingers together, then suddenly blurted, "I'm sorry for trespassing. I won't do it again, honest."
Ororo went to one knee in front of the little girl and touched the small shoulder. "I am not angry, child. I saw the remains of the other bouquet last night, and I have been trying all night to figure out who had left them there. I saw your footprints by the gate, and I followed them. It was you, was it not?" the girl nodded, still not looking up. Ororo sighed. "Please look up, child. I am not angry. Really."
Slowly, the girl looked up, and Ororo saw her face plainly. The child wasn't as young as she had thought; She had estimated her at about eight or nine, due to her short stature; but her eyes, face, and, now that she could see it, the front of her body, indicated a girl about twelve or thirteen. The girl had shoulder-length, blunt-cut brown hair and a pair of startling blue-violet eyes, set in a heart-shaped face with soft lips that curved downward. She exuded an air of almost painful shyness, and Ororo found herself wanting to alleviate that shyness. "I am Ororo," she said, holding out her own hand in greeting.
"I…I know," the girl said, gazing directly into Ororo's eyes with her disconcerting indigo ones. "I've watched you in your garden a lot of times. I've heard your friends call your name."
"You have been watching me?" Ororo raised an eyebrow, and the girl's eyes returned to the ground.
"Yes," she said softly. "I could see your garden from my bedroom window when I came here, and I can get so lonely sometimes, all by myself. I wandered down here one day when you had the red-haired man in there helping you prune."
"Red hair…Oh, you mean Remy!" It took a moment for Ororo to figure that one out. Remy's hair looked brown inside the mansion, under artificial lights. But when he got outside under the sun his hair would turn auburn. As the summer wore on, his hair would be bleached so light by the sun it would seem red to a casual observer.
"Yes, the man who speaks French. He seems to like you very much. I wish I had a friend like that." And the girl sighed as they started walking.
Ororo smiled gently. "I will be your friend. But it would help if you told me your name."
The girl looked earnestly up into Ororo's face. "Promise you won't laugh?"
"Why would I laugh?" Ororo frowned.
"The kids at my old school did. They called me all kinds of names."
"What is your name?"
"Joette. I prefer Joey, though. You can't make as much fun of that."
"But that is a lovely name, child," Ororo said, distressed on the child's behalf. "Why would someone make fun of it?"
"My mother…" There was an odd hitch in the girl's voice. "My mother loved irises. When I was born my father gave her a big bouquet of them, and among them were irises called Joette. They were the exact color of my eyes, so Mother named me that."
"Your mother has wonderful taste," Ororo said. "I have some of those irises in my greenhouse…and they are the exact color of your eyes. They are very beautiful."
"My mother died several months ago," the girl said softly, reaching down to pick up the forgotten bouquet of white roses. "They couldn't find anyone else to take me, so they tracked down my father and told him he had to. He wasn't happy." She looked up. "He brought me here, and gave me over into the care of a nanny. He hired me tutors, and then he disappeared. I haven't seen him since I came here two months ago."
Ororo looked up, and blinked. They had been walking while she talked, and without her realizing it they had come up on the back lawns of the mansion that was Xavier's closest neighbor. It was a huge, old gray stone structure, with none of the modernization that had transformed the Xavier property into the sprawling complex of buildings it was today. The house looked as it had since the early 1900's. She remembered hearing the name of the property owner mentioned once or twice, but had forgotten it. "Who is your father?"
"Henri LeFevre. My mother was French/American, her name was Elise Gourand. We moved to France after Mother and Father divorced when I was six. I lived there for seven years."
"Your English is perfect," Ororo said admiringly. "My friend Remy is Cajun French, and he speaks with much more of an accent than you do."
"Oh, I can speak French too. I had to learn to speak it when I was in France. But I'm not very good at it." She stopped. "This is my house here. There's nobody but me, the housekeeper, six servants, and my two tutors and ma gouvernante here." Her governess, Ororo's mind translated, her nanny. She had picked up enough French from Remy to understand that much.
"Where do you get the roses?" Ororo asked. She didn't see anything resembling a garden here.
Joey smiled. "Come this way." She led her around the side of the house, and there, tucked away under several trees at the bottom of a long, downward sloping grass lawn, was a small greenhouse. She took a key from her pocket, unlocked the door, and led Ororo inside.
The mingled scents of fragrant roses, jasmine, magnolias, tulips, orchids, and a myriad of other flowers reached Ororo's nose. She sniffed the fragrant air of the greenhouse, admiring the way the scents all seemed to compliment one another, and not clash. "Your gardener is doing a wonderful job."
"There is no gardener." Ororo looked down at the girl sharply, wondering if Joey was joking, but the girl was completely serious. "This is my place. When I came here I saw it, and the plants in it weren't being tended, so I asked Father if I could have the greenhouse. I love plants, and gardening, and especially flowers. He told me I could do whatever I liked and told me to ask the landscaper for flowers and whatever else I wanted. So I did."
Ororo looked around. There was an awful lot of work, and time, invested into this little sanctuary. "You must work in here often," she said.
"It's the only place I feel truly at home," Joey said, a little sadly. "It's the only place that's really my own. I can get away from the whole world here, close everyone out and just be me. I'm not comfortable in the house; it's too big, and empty, and lonely, and Mrs. Seward, the nanny who is in charge of me, doesn't like me much. I don't like her. If Father would only come home I could tell him I'm not happy with her and ask him to find someone new, but he hasn't come home since I got here, and I have no one to ask."
At that moment, a voice broke into the peace and quiet of the greenhouse. "Joette! Joette! Damn that child, where is she? Joette!"
Joey hurriedly stepped out of the greenhouse, taking the key from her pocket and locking the door after Ororo got out. "I'm here, Mrs. Seward."
The woman stopped and stared at Ororo, standing beside Joette. "And who is this?"
"I am Ororo," Ororo stepped forward and held out her hand. "I live next door to you. I was taking a walk and ran into Joey. We got into a discussion of plants and flowers, and she offered to show me her greenhouse."
The woman stared disapprovingly at the little girl, and Joey wilted almost visibly. Ororo could almost see her withdrawing into herself again. "You terrible child, interrupting someone like that and dragging her off into that little sweatbox you like so much! And what have you been doing, you're all muddy and messy! Go inside at once. Mr. Kingsley is looking for you for your math lesson."
Joey stared at the ground. "Can I change first?"
"'May I change first, Mrs. Seward!' Honestly, you'd think you were still living in that little backwoods French town, the way you talk! Have you forgotten about the manners I have tried to teach you?"
Joey shrank almost visibly. "May I go and change first, Mrs. Seward?" she asked in a tiny voice.
The woman put her hands on her hips and frowned. "If you are going to ruin your clothes like that don't expect me to wash them! No, you've gone about with dirty clothes so far, you can very well go the rest of the day without changing! You will not change until you take your bath tonight, understand? Afterward, you will take your regular meal in your room, no dessert, and you will go straight to bed! There will be no TV tonight, and if I catch you reading under the covers with a flashlight again I'll take your books away, and you'll be confined to the house for the rest of the week."
Joey's eyes flew up to meet the woman's. "Please, Mrs. Seward, don't ground me. The roses need to be pruned this week, and if I don't do that this week I won't have early roses next spring!"
"As if I care about your precious roses!" the woman said scathingly. "If you paid half as much attention to your math as you did those stupid flowers, your tutor wouldn't be as upset! But if you don't want to be grounded, get into that house right now and go get your books together. Mr. Kingsley is waiting in the library for you." Joey ducked her head, her face pink, and nodded once to Ororo before scampering off toward the house.
"I'm sorry," the woman said coldly to Ororo. "She is a most exasperating child, running off at odd hours to play with her stupid plants. I regret that she has disturbed you in your walk. She will be punished for it." And she started to turn away.
Ororo was so startled at this sudden diatribe that the other woman was almost out of earshot before she said, "Wait. I was not at all bothered; in fact, I quite enjoyed her company. Would anyone mind if I came tomorrow after Joey's lessons were over to see her?"
The woman started at Ororo. "And what would a grown woman like you want with a silly little child like her? Don't bother about her. And please, don't call her Joey. It's a name for a boy, not a proper young lady. Mr. LeFevre introduced her to me as Joette, and that is what I will continue to call her until he says otherwise."
"But may I come to see her?"
The woman shook her head. "She is fine. You need not bother about her. Good evening, Miss." And the woman swept stiffly away, heading for the house at the top of the hill.
Ororo stared at the woman's retreating back. No wonder Joey didn't like her; her abrasive personality and cold demeanor would cow any child, and on a sensitive little girl like Joey, the effect would be like putting a black cloth over a lamp. Very little of Joey would come through. Apparently, Joey's excessive shyness wasn't all due to her own demeanor; it was due to unfamiliar surroundings and poor handling. Ororo began to wonder who her father was, who could be so blind to his daughter's personality.