I pulled into the driveway and shut off the truck. Amidst the free-falling snowflakes, I dropped from the cab and onto the ground. I held onto the door with one hand until I steadied my feet on the ground carefully. Once I was stable, I reached for my bag and shouldered it, and then carefully grasped my mysterious rose gently by the stem. I used my hip to swing the truck door closed, and I carefully made my way to the truck.

I opened the front door, and walked inside. Hopping up the stairs, I set my backpack down in my bedroom before heading back into the kitchen. Charlie had no reason to keep a vase; he wasn’t much of a flower person. I just needed to find something to hold water and the rose. A cup, a glass, anything.

I found an old juice glass; it was small in radius and reasonably tall in height. I filled it half-full with water, then set the rose inside. I couldn’t help but smile, it was so lovely, so… perfect.

I carried the glass up to my room and set it on the edge of my desk. It could get indirect sunlight there, and I could see it from just about anywhere in the room. I smiled again, sitting down on my bed to look at it.

Then another thought hit me. Where did it come from? I knew I had locked the cab doors. So the person who put the rose in my truck had unlocked the doors and relocked them. I had the only key, to my knowledge. I lay back on my bed to contemplate it further.

So, no doors. How else could the rose have gotten inside? The windows? The person would’ve had to have rolled a window down, put the rose in, and then rolled the window back up. Possible? Not very.

How else could it have happened then? How did that one thing go? Occam’s Razor? All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the correct one. But what was the simplest solution? Was someone breaking into my car, putting a rose inside, and then relocking the door really the simplest? It didn’t seem so.

But for the time, I had no other explanation. Therefore, by elimination, it was the simplest. Right? It still left one question unanswered.

Who? Who had done that? Who would go through all that trouble for me? Who could go through that for me? It certainly seemed impossible.

It didn’t seem like something Mike Newton would do. He would’ve left a note; he had made it blatantly obvious that he wanted to go to the movies. So who would’ve left me a rose… but not a note?

My heart stopped. It was a practical joke. It wasn’t a secret admirer at all. It couldn’t be.

I sighed. That made more sense. Occam’s Razor. The simplest was the right one. No one really wanted to give me a rose. It was a joke. I smiled grimly at the rose on my desk. At least it was pretty.

Well, problem solved. I hopped up from my bed and headed downstairs to start dinner. At least order was restored, everything in its proper place, including me.

Dinner passed quietly and I headed upstairs to get ready for bed. I grabbed my pajamas and my bathroom bag.

After starting up the hot water, I stripped out of my clothes. The hot water felt wonderful. For a brief few moments, I forgot that I’d been the target of a somewhat cruel practical joke.

It had been a little exciting thinking that perhaps I had a secret admirer. Something I was unused to. It had been thrilling to try and figure out who had left it and how. Now, it didn’t matter.

I scrubbed my fingers through my hair a little stronger than I should have. Rinsing the strawberry shampoo, I added the conditioner, rinsed, and then washed my body. After that, I just stood under the hot water, letting it massage my back and slowly undo the tension in my spine.

At some point, the steam in the bathroom made it nearly impossible to breathe, so it was at this moment I chose to take leave of the shower. I shut off the water, dried off, and crawled into my pajamas. After running the towel through my hair a couple of times and tossing it into the hamper, I walked back to my bedroom.

And screamed.

Charlie came running.

“Bella?” He called from the base of the stairs. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, Dad… sorry, no one’s been in the house, right?”

“Yeah… why?” Charlie sounded more confused than I was.

“No reason, it’s okay. Really. Just had a momentary lapse,” I explained, sounding calmer than I felt.

“Okay, if you need anything, just holler,” he said before retreating back to the game. I swallowed nervously and walked into my bedroom, looking around the room.

There on the pillow of my neatly made bed rested another red rose. A perfect match to the perfect flower in the juice glass. I made a mental note to get a real vase for it — the juice glass was just sad and pathetic for such a lovely rose.

I looked around my room closely, no one seemed to be there, nothing else was disturbed. I opened my closet quickly, expecting someone to fall out onto the floor. Empty.

I went to the window and braced myself as I started to open it. The window opened as if it had been greased recently, nearly causing me to tumble out of it. Strange. I peered around into the evening, but there were no signs of any human being.

Okay Occam, explain this, I thought grimly.

After clearing the room kind of like a police officer — checking all the nooks and crannies for a potential suspect: under the bed, behind the door — I walked over to my bed and sat down, staring at the otherwise innocent flower on my pillow. My heart started to stammer again.

Whoever broke into your truck had also broken into your room, I reminded myself. I shivered at the thought. What if it ended up being some psycho stalker that was going to murder me in my sleep? I didn’t know whether to be flattered by or terrified of this new turn of events. No prank would go this far. My heart stuttered with the excitement, even if there were some danger to it.

I set the second rose in the juice glass next to the other. They were nearly identical; perfect in every way, the deepest shade of red and the starkest shade of green.

Mike knew where I lived. Maybe I shouldn’t rule him out as a suspect just yet. Tyler knew where I lived too. So did… well, everyone. Maybe that theory wasn’t a good idea.

“Bella?”

I glanced up to see a worried Charlie standing in the door.

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Are you okay? Your hands are shaking,” he said. I looked down to my hands, and they were, in fact, trembling. I swallowed.

“It’s okay. Just thinking,” I explained casually.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

The question was so abrupt and to-the-point that it startled me. I just stared at him before answering.

“No, why?” I asked. Charlie pointed to the roses on my desk.

“Where did you get those?” Ah, the roses. I sighed.

“Well, I don’t really know. Someone from school left them for me without any kind of note,” I explained. It was partially true. One of them had been left at school. I didn’t really want to explain that another was left in my bedroom. No need to worry Charlie.

“Ah, a secret admirer, eh? You kids,” he laughed, shaking his head, much to my chagrin.

“Right,” I muttered.

“Trying to figure it out?” I nodded.

“Well, if you want, I can hire a P.I. to look into it. We can fingerprint the roses and match it to our database if you really want to know,” he said, grinning. There was a twinkle in his eye as he winked. “Get some sleep, Bells. You’ll figure it out tomorrow. You’re a bright girl. A pretty one too, if I do say so myself,” he said before he turned and left.

I just sat still as stone blushing brightly in the middle of my room. A detective? That would be a little extreme for a red rose, wouldn’t it? But then again, whoever it was had snuck into and out of my bedroom without Charlie knowing.

Unless Charlie was in on it. Charlie had to be. That means it had to be someone Charlie approved of. This was looking more and more like Mike Newton by the minute.

As much as the thought of a secret admirer thrilled me, I dreaded the thought that it was Mike Newton. Mike just didn’t seem… romantic enough to pull this sort of thing off. It would have to be someone charming, someone thoughtful and intelligent. Dark and mysterious. And able to break into both my truck and bedroom.

Someone like… Edward Cullen.

Bad idea. My heart was frantic with the thought as a blush rushed to my cheeks. Why in the world would Edward give me a rose? That was the stupidest idea I’d had so far. He wouldn’t even speak to me in class. He had no reason to do such a thing. And yet he was probably the one I wished most for it to be.

But he wasn’t. He wasn’t the simplest solution. Mike Newton was. I shuddered slightly at the thought. Charlie approved of him, I wasn’t sure about the truck thing but he probably could’ve picked his way into it, and then locked the door on his exit.

Except one small problem. Mike was in both sixth and seventh hour with me. He would’ve had to put it in my truck fifth hour or earlier. I didn’t remember the rose being that cold. Maybe it was.

I groaned and flopped over onto my bed.

“Stupid rose, stupid Occam, stupid, stupid, stupid Singles’ Awareness Day,” I muttered. I didn’t even like Valentine’s Day. What I did like was pretending that it didn’t exist. But now I had to deal with it. The idea was exciting, but the stress was going to eat me alive.

I got up and turned off the light before crawling back into bed and snuggled under the covers. I had a feeling this was going to be a long week. Too bad it was only Tuesday.