Rose on a forearm

I have finished the rose for the nursery catalogue, though Mr Hale says the centre is too dark and wants it lifted. He has never looked at a bloom closely enough to know where the shadow belongs. I told him it belongs exactly there, where the petals fold over each other like a hand closing around a coin, and that a lifted centre would make it look like a rose someone had only heard described.

Every petal edge took most of an afternoon. I worked at the north window with a steel nib and a pot of sepia, and you were right that counting dots would drive a sane woman mad, so I stopped counting and let my wrist decide when to lift. By the third week my fingers ached in a way I have come to like. The leaves went on last, three of them trailing off to the lower left, because Hale said a single bloom looked lonely on a page. I gave it one more on the right for company, a tip peeking in from the edge like someone who arrived late and hoped not to be noticed.

The proof came back on Thursday with a note in his cramped hand: Leave the centre. He signed it without a word, which from Hale is practically a sonnet. I have pinned the print above my bench, where the light from the window picks out the dots one at a time.

Last evening I held it at arm's length, as you taught me, and the whole flower swam up out of nothing at all, just ink and patience and a great many small decisions. I had been afraid that a bloom made only of specks would look unfinished. It turns out that is the only way the petals could have been soft. Yours in haste, Ada.