The morning air was still thick with the cool, damp scent of dawn when the sharp staccato of designer heels pierced the tranquility of my garden. I didn’t have to lift my head from the rosebush I was tending; I knew that sound. There was only one person on earth audacious enough to wear Christian Louboutins to navigate the flagstone path my father had laid by hand.
Jessica.
“Still playing in the dirt, are we, Maddie?” Her voice was a confection of artificial sweetness, a sound I’d come to despise.
I kept my focus on the task at hand, carefully snipping a faded bloom from one of my father’s prized white rosebushes. He had planted them for my wedding, the same wedding that had dissolved into a sea of legal documents before my ex-husband, Mark, ran off with the very woman whose shadow now fell over me.
“Hello, Jessica.”
“I think you know why I’m here.” She drifted closer, her expensive perfume warring with the earthy fragrance of the soil. “The attorney is reading the will tomorrow. Mark and I thought it would be better if we could come to an arrangement beforehand.”
“An arrangement?” I finally straightened up, turning to face her. I wiped my soil-caked hands on the canvas of my gardening apron. “There’s nothing to arrange. This is my father’s home.”
“It was his home, Madeline,” she corrected, a smirk playing on her flawlessly painted lips. “Now it’s his estate. And given that Mark was like a son to Miles for the better part of fifteen years, we feel we have a right to a significant portion.”
The weight of the pruning shears in my gloved hand felt immense. “The same Mark who carried on an affair with his wife’s secretary behind her back? That Mark?”
“Oh, that’s ancient history,” Jessica said, dismissing my life’s most painful chapter with a flick of her manicured wrist. “Miles forgave him. They were on the golf course every Sunday right up until… well.” She paused, letting the unspoken words hang in the air for maximum impact.
The grief from my father’s passing was still a raw, gaping wound. It had been only two weeks since I’d lost him, and now this predator was circling, sensing what she believed was an easy kill.
“My father would never have left Mark a single dollar,” I stated, my voice firm as I stood to my full height. “He may have been forgiving, but he wasn’t a fool.”
The synthetic smile on Jessica’s face wavered for a fraction of a second. “We’ll see about that. Your brother, Ethan, seems to hold a different opinion.”
A cold dread washed over me at the mention of my brother’s name. We hadn’t exchanged more than a few words since the funeral, where he had spent the entire reception attached to Mark’s side, offering him more comfort than he had his own sister. “You’ve been speaking with Ethan?”
“Honey, we’ve done much more than speak,” she cooed, taking a step closer and lowering her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “He’s been incredibly… cooperative.”
My grip on the shears tightened. I could hear my dad’s voice from years ago, teaching me how to care for these very roses. A firm hand is necessary, Maddie, but never a cruel one. Even the sharpest thorns have their purpose.
“Leave my property, Jessica,” I said, my voice dangerously low. “Leave before I do something we both regret.”
She let out a laugh that sounded like shattering glass. “Your property? How adorable. This house, this land… it’s worth millions, Madeline. Did you honestly believe you’d be allowed to keep it all? To just sit here in your daddy’s mansion while the rest of us are left with scraps?”
“My father designed every room in this house. He built it from the ground up and planted every single tree on this property,” I countered, my voice shaking with a rage I struggled to contain. “This is about his legacy, not about your greed.”
“Legacy?” Jessica snorted with derision. “You need to wake up, Madeline. In the real world, everything is about money. And tomorrow, at that reading, you’re going to receive a very expensive education on that fact.”
She spun on her heel to depart, but stopped at the ornate garden gate. “Oh, and one more thing. I’d start packing if I were you. Mark and I figure it will take at least a month to complete the renovations before we can move in.”
As the sound of her clicking heels faded down the driveway, I looked at the white rose petals in my hand, now bruised and smeared with dirt from where my trembling fingers had crushed them. My father had always told me that white roses symbolized new beginnings. In that moment, all I could see was red. I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed the number of the one person I knew I could count on.
“Chloe? It’s Maddie. Jessica just stopped by.”
“Let me guess,” my best friend’s voice came through, sharp and clear. “She was every bit the monster we imagined.”
“And then some. Can you come over? Something she said about the will… I need to talk to you.”
“I’m on my way. Twenty minutes,” Chloe’s voice was a balm of reassurance. “And don’t you worry, Maddie. Your father was a much better chess player than they could ever imagine.”
After I ended the call, my eyes caught a sliver of white peeking out from beneath the dense foliage of a rosebush. An envelope, its corner darkened with morning dew. The elegant, familiar script on the front was unmistakably my father’s. It was addressed simply: Maddie.
My hands trembled as I picked it up, wondering how many days it had been lying in wait, concealed among the thorns. The paper felt thick and substantial, as if it held more than just ink and words.
“Well, Dad,” I whispered, turning the sealed envelope over. “It seems you had one more secret to share.”
In the distance, the roar of Jessica’s sports car engine faded away. I stood alone in the quiet garden, clutching what felt like the first clue in a final, intricate puzzle my father had left for me to solve. Whatever game Jessica and Mark thought they were playing, I had a sudden, fierce conviction that they were about to discover they had profoundly underestimated their opponent.
