When it was time to leave for Christmas, Chris loaded his stuff in his trunk first, taking about half of the large trunk. He drove over to the girls' dorm to pick up Rose. She finished filling his trunk, and loaded the back seat from floor to ceiling, and back to the rear window. She even put her pillows between them in the front seat. Grandmother had given her all of it since she had come to live with them.
"I've never seen a guy with so much stuff," she said. "I thought guys traveled light."
"What!?! I'm only taking up half of the trunk. That is everything I own. You've taken up the rest of my car, and you've got more at home!"
"Well, they told us not to leave anything in our rooms," she smiled.
They joked and laughed most of the way home. Rose got quiet and silently prayed, "Lord, if I'm going to have any kind of relationship with him, I've got to tell him."
"Chris, I have to tell you something. You know I am a foster child. I used to live in a small town close to Hartwell, called Dewey Rose. I lived with different foster parents than I do now. I lived with them for six years, and he raped me repeatedly. He got me pregnant, and I gave the baby up for adoption." She began telling him her story, filling in a few details, but not all of them. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands, holding on so tight that his fingers and knuckles turned white. She looked out her window as she talked.
His heart was breaking. He wanted to cry, but he wouldn't cry in public. He wanted to beat Jerry up and neuter him. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He wanted to hold her, pet her hair and tell her that she would never have to worry about anyone doing that to her again, but instead, he said to himself, "What are you talking about? Once you drop her off, you won't see her until January. You don't have any relationship with her!"
Rose finished talking in front of a Baptist church, beside which was the road Chris needed to turn down to get to her house. She had wanted to end there so Chris wouldn't feel obligated to be with her or say anything. She wanted to give him time to think about it, and if he was still interested, maybe she had heard from God.
Chris helped her empty her things out of his car, even taking some things inside to her room. Once her things were all out, and Paw-paw and Grandmother were inside, Rose asked Chris to come to church with her Sunday. He said he might, but wasn't sure. The last time he was there, Lagina had rejected him, and he wasn't interested in going back.
"Well, Lord, if he shows up, then I'll try to date him. If not, I guess he couldn't accept what I told him, and I'll just have to find someone else."
Chris had not said anything to Rose, not even trying to comfort her. He was just so shocked by what she told him. Rose insists she wouldn't have let him even if he had tried. "I didn't want him to just feel sorry for me."
Chris left, still not knowing what to say to her. He had no intention of seeing her at all that Christmas. He really wasn't interested in her as a girlfriend.
When he arrived home, his sister, who was also living with their Granny, talked him into going Christmas shopping with her. They looked through the paper for sales. Chris noticed a full page add for a new jewelry store that had opened on Fairburn Road. They were offering necklaces at ridiculously low prices. He asked his sister, Melanie, to go with him and pick out something.
"Even though I'm not interested in her as a girlfriend, I can still get her something as a friend."
They looked at all the gold jewelry, but he didn't see anything he liked. The sales lady informed him they only had a small selection of sterling silver jewelry--about five styles of necklaces. He decided the thick necklaces were too gaudy, so he choose a thin one.
"Will this hold one of those things that hangs off a necklace?"
"A pendant? Oh, yes sir. Even though this necklace is thin, it is strong and will easily hold a pendant."
She showed him a selection of her most popular choices, but he didn't like any of them, not even the heart pendants. "I'm looking for something really special. Do you have anything else?"
"I believe this is it," she replied.
He walked around, looking in each case. He noticed a silver pendant that seemed to be in the wrong place. It was in the shape of a heart, with a hollowed-out center, so that you could see through it. In the center, a tiny, silver rose stood, reaching across the space of the heart outline, from the bottom point of the heart with the stem to the top right of the heart with the bloom. Inside each petal, and etched periodically on the heart, was a patch of silver that shone even more than the rest of the pendant.
"A rose in my heart. That's just what she is. Even if I never date her, this will let her know that she always has a place in my heart. It's perfect!" he said to himself.
