Not purchased.
Not negotiated.
Returned.
The first morning I came back, I stood at the top of the staircase.
For several minutes, I could not make myself descend.
My body remembered falling.
My hands began shaking.
Rebecca waited below.
Phoebe stood beside her.
Neither told me to hurry.
I took one step.
Then another.
Then another.
When I reached the landing where my head had struck the marble, I stopped.
A faint mark remained in the banister.
I touched it.
Then kept walking.
Outside, the rose garden was gone.
The police excavation had destroyed most of it.
For weeks, I couldn’t decide whether to restore it.
Eventually Rebecca gave me the answer.
“Don’t rebuild the old garden.”
“Why?”
“Because your grandmother died there.”
I looked at the bare earth.
“What should I do?”
“Build something she would have liked.”
So we planted wildflowers.
Hundreds of them.
No symmetrical beds.
