She Was Sitting In My Front-Row Seat Holding My Novel — Smiling Like She Had Stolen My Life

cabinets.

Missing ledgers.

A locked drawer in my mother’s desk had been forced open.

But the conservatory had always been my mother’s true office.

She had hidden things where men did not look.

Behind the orange trees.

Under seed catalogs.

Inside the hollow base of a garden statue shaped like a wren.

Anna found the brass latch.

Her daughter sat on the tile floor continue reading …