"We can explain—" William starts.
I take a step back.
"It's not—" Adrian says.
I take another step back.
And the thoughts just kept spiraling in my head. They wanted a severe sentence. William went behind my back and used Paula to try to get Cross Manor. They plotted together. For a long time.
The music is still playing.
I want to get out of this garden.
But there is one other thing I need to know. I look Carter directly in the eyes and ask,”The landscaping job?”
And Carter just hangs his head, breaking eye contact for the first time.
I want to run far away. Far away from this party. Far away from these lies.
But Paula grabs me by the upper arm and says close to my face.
“You can have the house” and then she looks at the men and then back at me “But I take everything else”
39
SIENNA
The gardens look the same.
The hedges along the front path are a little fuller, the roses along the east fence trained differently than I remember, but everything else is pretty much the same. Same gravel. Same cedar benches worn smooth along the armrests. The smell hits me before I've properly looked at anything, cut grass and rosemary and something underneath both of those that might just be memory.
I was sixteen when they brought me here and eighteen when I left. It only took Angela, my assigned therapist, two weeks to figure out I didn't have an addiction problem.
She wanted to inform the authorities responsible for my case. I begged her not to.
I was two weeks in and I already understood that this place was better than going home. So I told her the whole truth, everything, how long it had been going on and what it had looked like, and she let me stay.
I walk the front garden before I go inside. The gravel sounds the same under my shoes and my body knows where to turn at the first junction without any decision from me.
The residents I pass are doing what residents do here in the morning. A man on the bench near the fountain, coffee balanced on his knee. Two women in the herb beds along the east wall, working alongside each other without talking. They look like people in the process of finding their way back to something solid.
I know that look.
They all seem to be thriving. The same way I thrived. And that's what motivates me. The paying it forward. To allow others who were not so lucky to have the same level of help that Greenhaven provides.
It was in these gardens that I figured out what I was actually good at.
Greenhaven has a program that helps people recover from their addictions through gardening activities. There were several components involved, but the one I remembered the most is working on delayed gratification, providing a sense of empowerment that benefits at-risk adolescents during incarceration.
You put something in the ground and come back the next day and it looks the same. You come back the day after that and it still looks the same. The work is invisible for weeks. You keep doing the small things, watering, checking the soil, adjusting the light, and you trust the process even when you can't see the result.
I go through the gardens and enter the front offices. The receptionist at the front desk is someone I don't recognize.
"Hi. My name is Sienna Cross. I have a meeting with Angela."
The receptionist confirms and tells me how to go to Angela’s Office.
Once I’m there I knock on the already open door. Angela jumps up from behind her desk and comes to hug me.
