PART 1

I spent three years babying that David Austin rosebush. It was a rare apricot hybrid I ordered special from a grower in England. I amended the soil with compost every spring. I measured the pH levels weekly. I pruned it with absolute precision. The Oak Creek Garden Club annual competition was the highlight of my year, and this time, I knew I had the winning entry.

The night before the competition, the bush was magnificent. It had over two dozen perfect, tightly spiraled blooms.

My nine year old granddaughter, Maya, came over for dinner that evening. She knows how much my garden means to me. Before she left, she ran out to the yard with a thin strip of shiny blue ribbon. She tied it gently around the thickest stem near the bottom of the largest flower. She told me it was a lucky charm to guarantee I would win the blue ribbon the next day. I kissed her forehead and promised I would leave it right there.

I woke up at dawn the next morning. I always like to cut my competition flowers while the dew is still on the petals. I took my basket and my sharpest shears out to the backyard. I stopped dead in my tracks on the patio.

My beautiful bush was completely bare. Every single flower was gone.

It was not the work of deer or rabbits. The cuts were clean and angled perfectly, right above the five leaf nodes.

Someone had deliberately stripped my prize plant in the middle of the night. I stood there in the chilly morning air and cried. I felt completely violated. My husband Arthur came out in his bathrobe a few minutes later, holding a mug of coffee. He patted my shoulder and told me it was probably just some bored neighborhood teenagers playing a cruel prank.

I almost did not go to the competition. I wanted to stay home and mourn my ruined garden. But I was the club treasurer, and I had responsibilities. I washed my face, put on a nice dress, and drove to the community conservatory where the event was held.

The main hall was filled with long tables displaying hundreds of vases. I walked down the center aisle, feeling completely empty. Then I saw my next door neighbor, Linda, standing proudly beside the center table.

Linda moved in two years ago after a messy divorce. She never pulled a weed.

Her lawn was mostly crabgrass. Yet there she was, standing next to a massive crystal vase overflowing with the most perfect apricot roses I had ever seen. The judges were pinning a massive first place rosette to her display card.

I walked closer. My heart pounded against my ribs. I know my flowers. I know the exact shade of that apricot pink. I know the subtle ruffled edges of the petals.

“Congratulations, Linda,” one of the judges said. “These are truly spectacular. What is your secret?”

Linda smiled and flipped her hair over her shoulder. “Some people simply grow better flowers,” she said loudly as the judges applauded. She looked right at me when she said it.

I felt sick to my stomach. I looked down at the base of her arrangement. The vase was packed tight, but one stem near the back was slightly exposed. Tucked just behind a piece of decorative fern, I saw a tiny flash of shiny blue.

I leaned in an inch closer. It was a thin strip of blue ribbon tied in a messy child’s knot. Maya’s lucky charm.

PART 2

I did not confront Linda right then and there. If I caused a screaming match in the middle of the judging hall, I would be the one asked to leave. I needed absolute proof, and I knew exactly how to get it.

I turned around and marched straight to the administrative office at the back of the conservatory. Helen, our garden club president, was sitting at her desk sorting through registration forms.

I closed the door behind me. I told Helen that my entire prize rosebush had been butchered overnight. I told her that Linda was standing out in the hall right now with my stolen flowers. Finally, I told her about the blue ribbon my granddaughter had tied to the stem, which was currently sitting in Linda’s winning vase.

Helen was shocked. The club takes theft very seriously. Competitors have been banned for life for stealing cuttings, let alone a whole display. The conservatory requires members to drop off their arrangements between four and six in the morning on the day of the show. Because the building is unlocked during those hours, the club installed a high definition security camera facing the staging room entrance last year.

Helen nodded grimly. She locked the office door and turned her computer monitor toward me. She opened the security software and brought up the footage from the side entrance. We fast forwarded through the dark hours of the early morning.

At exactly 4:12 a.m., Linda’s silver sedan pulled into the frame.

We watched Linda get out of her car. She was dressed in black yoga pants and a dark sweater. She walked toward the staging room door.

“Look at her hands,” I whispered.

Linda was not carrying anything. She had no clippers, no buckets, and no flowers. She walked right up to the heavy glass door of the staging room.

Sitting on the concrete pad beside the door was a large wicker basket. The camera resolution was sharp enough to see it was filled to the brim with my apricot roses. Linda simply bent down, picked up the basket, and carried it inside.

“She did not cut them herself,” Helen said slowly. “Someone else brought them here for her. Let me rewind and see who dropped the basket off.”

Helen clicked the mouse and dragged the video timeline backward. We watched the time stamp jump from four o’clock to three thirty, then to three fifteen.

At 3:18 a.m., a different car pulled up just out of frame. A tall figure walked into the glow of the security light. The person was carrying the heavy wicker basket with both hands.

I stopped breathing. The person on the screen was wearing a bright yellow, heavy duty gardening coat with reflective silver stripes on the sleeves.

It was my coat. I had bought it at a specialty catalog store. There was not another one like it in our entire town. I had been looking for it since Tuesday, assuming I had misplaced it in the garage. The hood was pulled up tightly over the person’s head, completely hiding their face.

PART 3

The person in my yellow coat set the basket down carefully next to the staging room door.

“Why would Linda’s accomplice wear your gardening coat?” Helen asked, sounding completely baffled.

I shook my head, unable to speak. The figure on the screen was much taller than Linda. They had broad shoulders and walked with a stiff, heavy gait. It looked like a man.

The staging room door is kept locked until five in the morning. Competitors are supposed to wait for the staff. But the person on the screen did not wait. They reached into the deep front pocket of my yellow coat and pulled out a large bundle of keys.

The person stepped closer to the electronic keypad and the heavy lock on the door. They turned toward the camera just enough for the security light to catch the items dangling from their hand.

Helen reached out and pressed the spacebar on her keyboard. The video froze.

She clicked a magnifying glass icon on the screen and zoomed in on the person’s right hand.

Dangling from the brass ring was a heavy, antique black iron key. Attached to it was a brightly colored lanyard made of chunky plastic beads spelling out the word NANA.

Helen turned her chair to face me. She looked incredibly uncomfortable.

“Susan,” Helen said quietly. “On Tuesday, you asked me to check the lost and found. You said you lost your house keys and your club access fob. You told me to look for a beaded lanyard.”

I stared at the frozen image.

“Yes,” I croaked. My throat felt like it was full of sand.

“Then why,” Helen asked gently, “is the person wearing your coat using your missing house key to open our door?”

The heavy black iron key was the unique antique key to my home’s mudroom door. I kept it on the same ring as my electronic club fob.

I looked at the screen again. I looked at the broad shoulders beneath the yellow vinyl. I looked at the familiar, slightly scuffed brown leather loafers the person was wearing. They were size twelve. I had bought those exact shoes for Arthur last Christmas.

The puzzle pieces snapped together with terrifying speed. Arthur told me he was going to sleep in the guest room last night because his back was hurting. He had the perfect opportunity to slip out the back door, strip my rosebush, drive to the conservatory, and leave the flowers for Linda.

My husband had stolen my keys. My husband had stolen my coat. My husband had butchered my roses and delivered them to the divorced woman next door in the dead of night.

ENDING

I did not say another word to Helen. I stood up, walked out of the office, and drove straight home. I drove well over the speed limit.

Arthur’s car was still parked in the garage. He had told me he was too busy with paperwork to attend the flower show. He had kissed my cheek and wished me luck before I left. The absolute nerve of the man made my hands shake on the steering wheel.

I walked into the garage and went straight to the trunk of his car. I knew he kept a spare key hidden in the wheel well. I popped the trunk open.

There, shoved carelessly next to a spare tire, was my bright yellow gardening coat. Lying right on top of it was my missing key ring with Maya’s beaded lanyard. And underneath the coat, I found my favorite pair of bypass pruning shears. The blades were still covered in fresh green sap and tiny pieces of rose bark.

I grabbed the coat and the shears. I marched into the house and kicked the door shut behind me.

Arthur was sitting at the kitchen table reading a newspaper. He looked up, smiled, and then the color completely drained from his face when he saw what I was holding.

“Did you think the conservatory did not have cameras, Arthur?” I asked. My voice was dangerously calm. “Or did you just think I was too stupid to recognize my own coat and my own keys?”

He stammered. He tried to deny it. He tried to say he found the coat on the street. I threw the sappy pruning shears onto the kitchen table. They landed with a heavy clatter right on top of the crossword puzzle.

“Helen and I watched you drop the basket off at three in the morning,” I lied slightly. “We watched Linda pick it up. I know everything.”

Arthur slumped in his chair. He rubbed his hands over his face and finally confessed. He had been sleeping with Linda for eight months. They started the affair when I went out of state to help my sister recover from surgery. Linda had been complaining for weeks that her garden was a disaster and she was going to be humiliated at the club competition. Arthur, wanting to play the grand hero for his mistress, promised he would get her the winning entry.

He thought he was being clever. He stole my keys earlier in the week so he could use my club fob. He wore my bright yellow coat so that if anyone drove by and saw a figure in the dark yard, they would just assume it was me tending to my plants. He planned to throw the coat in the neighborhood dumpster later that afternoon.

“It was just flowers, Susan,” he pleaded, trying to reach for my hand. “It is not a big deal.”

I pulled my hand back as if he were made of poison.

“It is not about the flowers, Arthur,” I said. “It is about the fact that you destroyed something I loved, just to impress the woman you are cheating on me with.”

I told him to pack a bag and get out of my house before I called our adult children and told them exactly why their father was suddenly homeless. He left an hour later, driving off to Linda’s house.

I went back to the garden club that afternoon with a USB drive containing the security footage. I demanded an emergency meeting with the board. When they saw the video, they did not hesitate. Linda was stripped of her first place ribbon immediately. She was banned from the Oak Creek Garden Club for life.

The scandal spread through our neighborhood like a wildfire. Women on our street stopped talking to Linda. People would deliberately turn their backs when she walked to her mailbox. The isolation became too much for her. She sold her house at a loss six months later and moved away. Arthur went with her, but I hear they are already miserable together.

Our divorce was finalized last month. I kept the historic house, the upgraded kitchen, and most importantly, the backyard.

Spring arrived a few weeks ago. Without Arthur’s toxic energy in the house, I poured all my love into the soil. My David Austin rosebush grew back twice as thick. Yesterday morning, it produced its first massive apricot bloom of the season. Maya came over after school, pulled a fresh blue ribbon from her pocket, and tied it securely to the stem.

This time, I know the flower will still be there tomorrow.