The silence of the garden usually brought me peace, but today, the air felt heavy with the scent of damp earth and the lingering shadows of my father’s funeral. It had only been three weeks since we laid Harrison to rest, and every corner of this estate breathed his memory, from the sturdy oak trees he’d planted as a young man to the delicate white roses that were currently under my care. I stood among the bushes, my fingers tracing the thorns, wondering how a place that held so much love could suddenly feel like a battlefield in a war I hadn’t yet realized I was fighting.
“Start packing already, because as soon as they read the will tomorrow, this house will be ours.” Misty’s voice reached me over the white rose bushes before I even looked up, sharp and jarring against the quiet morning. Her thin heels sank into the damp garden soil like it was a runway, not the place where my father had spent half his life. I kept cutting the dry branches with the pruning shears, slowly, just like he taught me when I was a child: steady hand, but never hurting the plant. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing my hands shake or my eyes well up with the fresh grief that still sat like a stone in my chest.
Those roses were planted the day I married Simon. He said white stood for clean beginnings. What irony. There they were, still standing, after witnessing the end of my fifteen-year marriage and the moment my ex-husband left me for his assistant, the same woman now standing in front of me, smelling like expensive perfume and arrogance. It was a scent that didn’t belong here, among the honeysuckle and the rich, honest smell of turned dirt.
“Good morning, Misty,” I said, without giving her the satisfaction of much eye contact. I focused on a particularly stubborn deadhead, snipping it with a definitive click.
She smiled with that fake sweetness she used whenever she wanted to humiliate someone quietly. “Tomorrow they’ll open Harrison’s will. Simon and I thought it’d be better to talk like civilized people before things get uncomfortable.”
I wiped my hands on my gardening apron and stood up. I was a few inches taller than her, even with her ridiculous heels sinking further into the mud with every passing second. “There’s nothing to discuss. This is my father’s house. This has always been home, and it will remain so.”
“Your father’s estate,” she corrected, savoring every word as if it were a fine chocolate. “And Simon was like a son to him for many years. The least would be for us to receive what we deserve. We’ve already looked at some blueprints for the expansion. This old place has good bones, but it’s so… dated.”
