The Sinner (Notorious 1)

“It’s just a bad word,” I said. “Kids think it’s funny to write bad words on our back wall.”

Sluts.

Whores.

Thieves.

“Was this here while I was gone?” Margot asked. She got back a week and half ago from the cruise.

“No way,” I denied, though I wasn’t totally sure. I loved my jungle, wild and unmaintained, but it obstructed the view of the back wall. “It’s new.”

“It’s never been this bad before,” Margot said. “Come look at this.”

Katie and I headed around the tree and through the vines to the greenhouse and back wall. Now that I was closer I could tell that Margot was actually very upset. Her fine elegant hands were shaking.

“Look,” Margot whispered, pointing to the greenhouse.

Every pane of glass had been shattered and all of Margot’s orchids were destroyed. The unearthed roots like veins, strewn across tabletops and the floor. Dirt like blood, everywhere.

It was awful.

“Oh, my lord, Margot.”

Occasionally Margot went to New Orleans and played poker, or took a cruise with an “admirer” and gambled across the seven seas, and she used to keep her winnings back here buried in pots because she didn’t trust banks. She’d done it for years before I found out and made her stop. “Are you hiding money back here again?”

“No.” Margot pulled a face. “I lost on this last one, I told you that.”

“Then why would anyone do this?”

“Because it was here. I don’t know.” She looked around the wreckage, her face drawn. “I understand you hate the idea. But I think it’s time.”

I started picking up shattered pottery, knowing I was too late—the courtyard was out of control. The boldest of the high school students were drinking back here, and Katie was almost always getting cuts and bruises from the roses and broken cobblestones.

These plants, the trees, the bushes—nothing had been touched in years. Nearly twenty. But the idea of someone else, some stranger back here, was unthinkable.

Because if they were in my courtyard then they’d be in my home. In my life. And no good ever came of that—pain was an excellent teacher.

“I’ll clean it up,” I said, a bubble of frantic energy rising in my throat. “I start vacation on Tuesday. I can work on it then.”

“I’ll help,” Katie chimed in, crouching next to me to pick up the ruined orchids and I winked at her, grateful.

“Honey,” Margot said, shaking her head. “We both know you’re taking the time off to work on that research for the Discovery Channel. There aren’t enough hours in the day. And it’s not just cleaning up the plants anymore. We need the greenhouse rebuilt, the wall needs to be fixed and I think we need an alarm system.”

“In our garden?”

Margot flung out a hand to the shattered remains of her greenhouse, the orchids like dead animals. All the evidence she needed, really, to prove that things were getting dangerous.

“Now the greenhouse, next the house? These assholes are getting bolder. You know that.”

I looked down at Katie, the messy rumpled perfection of her. Strangers in the garden? Bent on helping? Or, worse, strangers in our house? Bent on who knows what?

When put that way, it was an easy call.

“Margot,” I sighed, because Margot wanted this done ages ago and had only held off because I was so against it. “I’m so sorry.”

“They’re all gone,” Margot said, picking up her red and yellow Giant Ansiella. “They’ve ruined everything.”

I looked around, chagrined and regretful that I’d let things get this bad. I should have done the basic maintenance that would have at least kept things safe. I had, after all, managed to keep the middle courtyard groomed and lovely. A pastoral paradise.

But the back courtyard was mine—it had been from the moment my mother had dropped me and my brothers off with Margot and left without a word. And I liked the wilderness of it, the overgrown vines and crumbling statues. The stone walls covered in hens and chicks, the roses pink and red like hidden gems, small beating hearts in a giant breathing body of green.

And so did my daughter. She was herself back here, feral and tough. The way kids weren’t any more. The way she needed to be to survive.

Oh, stop. It’s a garden. You are a grown woman who should have more important things to do than get attached to weeds and rosebushes.

Or maybe I should have more in my life than weeds and rosebushes. The thought flickered to life briefly before I extinguished it. My life was fine. It was the assholes destroying our property that needed to get a life.

“I know,” Margot watched me carefully. “We’ve been alone in this house for so long it seems strange to bring someone else in.”

“We don’t need anyone else!” Katie cried and I tucked an arm around my daughter, realizing that maybe there was such a thing as too much family unity—considering my eight-year-old was showing signs of xenophobia.