A Home Somewhere

Chester had expected a little girl, but Suyin is already taller than her mother Li Ann. Perhaps that isn't surprising, as his parents are tall, and he had been one of the tallest boys in his high school. He had thought she would have been immediately recognizable, like his sister would have been had she survived her infancy. Fair and pink, gold-red hair, straight high nose, and finely etched lips. 'A rosebud,' Mother had said to a visiting neighbour a long time ago, when he was about five. He had never forgotten the word, because Mother hardly ever spoke about her, and the doubled sound, 'rosebud,' lingered as a mysterious effect — he had not known what a rosebud looked like when he first heard her say it — then took on the folded shape of a pink flower when he accompanied her to a florist a few months later and the woman at the shop had asked, 'Do you want some roses?'