lake road. The trees were the same trees. The turn that brought the house into view was the same turn it had always been.
I made the turn.
I stopped the car.
I sat a moment looking at what had been done.
The garden.
That was first.
The first thing I saw was the garden along the south fence, Frances June Merritt’s garden for forty years, planted and tended through seasons before I existed, seasons I remembered, and seasons after she was gone.
The flowers had been ripped out.
Not
