“I’ll tell you more when your heart rate’s back to normal. You might code here on the bloody pavement, hearing what I did.”
The EMT clears me to go home, but I don’t. Not yet. I stick around with Trace for word on the minister he’s been assigned to protect.
The rest of the day is lost in sorrow, our Leinster House will never be the same.
Two days later, Trace is sent to Algeria to chase down terrorists, and I go back to making arms dealers bleed.
I never did find out what happened in Las Vegas.
Chapter 1
Fallon Nova
Manhattan - August (Present Day)
Icrouch on the edge of my garden plot, fingers combing through the soil, smoothing it once, twice, three times. The rhythm steadies my breath. Only when the dirt is even, and I’ve made a series of precise parallel shallow depressions, do I dare press the coriander seeds into the rich earth, lining them up by color.
Pale ones first.
Dark ones last.
In perfect rows.
All my pretty perfects.
Okay, the plot doesn’t belong to me. Not really. Neverland Community Garden belongs to the City of New York. These neat little squares in a park around the corner from my apartment building are leased to whoever wants to bring beauty to the city after suffering a long waitlist and paying a small fee.
But this eight-by-eight garden tract feels like mine in ways nothing else in Manhattan does.
“You’ll do well here, Cory,” I whisper to the seeds as I cover them. “You’ll get plenty of sun. No pesky sparrows will nibble on your leaves when you sprout in a couple of weeks. Not like back home.”
Back home is Ashbourne, a quiet town north of the city. My father’s estate was professionally manicured, but my nanny talked Daddy into letting me create my first garden. I carved that patch of earth when I was nine.
The neighborhood kids laughed at me. Said I was growing weeds. Called me a dirt freak. I guess I was usually covered in mud, but gardening made me happy.As they hollered, I pressed my hands over my ears and counted to twenty until their voices blurred.
Then my lavender bloomed and bloomed. And bloomed. Next, it took over much of the yard. Nanny Elaine said the whole street smelled better because of me. But the next day I saw bruises on her face, and the day after that, she was gone.
So was my garden.
Now I have this patch of land that no one can take away from me. I run my thumb along the fuzzy green and purple sprout of the lavender I planted. This year’s blooms are finished, but touching the leaves still gives off the sweet scent that is tart and calming all at once.
Beside it, my mint stretches, greedy and unruly, but I don’t mind. The marigolds glow like small beaming suns. They share the decorating duty with the zinnias.
This year, I also planted mint, chamomile, and rosemary.
Along the fence line, sits a row of perfect rose bushes. Those thorny guardians don’t belong to me, but I talk to them anyway.
“Nice color, Thorn,” I murmur to the tallest stem, the shovel handle warm in my grip.
“Does he answer you back?” a voice says from behind me.
I flinch, but when I glance over my shoulder, I see it’s only Mrs. Kaplan, the retired schoolteacher who grows tomatoes two tracts down.
“Your section is the prettiest here,” she says, pointing her trowel at my rows.
Something itches under my skin. Compliments of my gardening always feel wrong. Like someone will get in trouble for it, like Nanny Elaine did.
I shrug, eyes dropping to the dirt. “Just keeping order.”
