JULIAN

"But I do it." She sat back on her heels for a moment, looking at what she'd cut. "Because she was right. You have to. The plant needs it." She stood, moved to the next one. "She was usually right about the roses."

The city below us made its sounds.

The dusk was doing its particular and final work, the light almost entirely gone from above now, the specific and amber quality of the city-glow beginning to be the dominant thing, the particular and beautiful strangeness of a city lighting itself from the inside.

"What was she like?" I said.

Lena was quiet for a moment.

Not the quiet...