Chapter 2: A Pattern in the Mulch
Margaret didn’t call the police.
Not yet.
She knew enough about neighborhood disputes to understand that once uniforms arrived, the story could become about an argument instead of what had actually happened.
Instead, she walked across the street.
Karen remained in Margaret’s flower bed, unusually quiet.
The damaged garden belonged to Harold and June Ellis, a retired couple who had lived on the street longer than almost anyone.
June was standing on her porch in gardening gloves.
She looked toward Margaret, then toward Karen.
“I thought you knew about this,” June said.
Margaret stopped.
“About what?”
June pointed at the garden.
“That.”
Margaret looked again.
There were red flowers scattered across the mulch. Some had been pulled cleanly. Others had been snapped at the stem.
“How long?”
“Three days ago.”
Margaret glanced back at Karen.
Karen had finally stepped out of the flower bed.
She folded her arms.
“Maybe they were already damaged.”
June gave a humorless laugh.
“They weren’t.”
Harold came outside carrying an old wooden cane. He was seventy-one, thin and slightly stooped, but his eyes were sharp.
He didn’t look at Karen.
He looked at Margaret.
“She came by two weeks ago,” he said. “Told June the red flowers didn’t fit the neighborhood.”
Karen immediately interrupted.
“I was making a suggestion.”
Harold shook his head.
“You told us the association wanted them gone.”
That changed the atmosphere.
Margaret looked at Karen.
“What association?”
Karen’s lips tightened.
“Our neighborhood committee.”
Margaret knew every member of the committee.
Karen wasn’t one of them.
There was no formal landscaping rule banning red flowers. Margaret had received the association handbook when she moved in years earlier, and she remembered the section about front yards clearly.
Owners could maintain their gardens however they wished as long as plants didn’t obstruct sidewalks or create hazards.
Red flowers were never mentioned.
Karen began explaining that she was only trying to protect property values.
But the more she spoke, the less convincing she sounded.
She complained about colors.
Then landscaping consistency.
Then “the look of the entire street.”
Finally, Margaret asked one question.
“Why only red?”
Karen went silent.
Harold looked at Margaret.
June looked at Margaret.
Even Karen seemed to realize that the question had changed everything.
Margaret walked back toward her own yard.
Near the sidewalk, she noticed something half-hidden beneath a shrub.
A small plastic garden marker.
It had been pushed into the soil beside one of the destroyed plants.
There was no name on it.
Just a handwritten number.
Margaret looked at the neighboring houses.
The numbers weren’t addresses.
They were something else.
And suddenly she wanted to know exactly how many red gardens had been marked.
