Chapter 8 - The Return
Two days before the Grand Opening Gala of the Rose Ashford Botanical Foundation, a quiet incident occurred at the estate’s main security gate.
I was walking through the newly restored heritage rose garden, checking the spring blooms, when my head gardener, Marcus, approached me with a troubled look on his face.
“Miss Marianne,” Marcus said softly. “There’s a young woman at the south gate. She’s been standing there in the rain for an hour. Security asked her to leave, but she refuses.”
I frowned slightly. “Who is it?”
“It’s your sister, ma’am,” Marcus replied.
I paused, holding a pair of brass pruning shears in my hand.
I walked down the long gravel path toward the iron south gate.
Standing on the other side of the black iron bars was Natalie.
She looked entirely different from the girl who had worn a crystal-studded dress six months ago. She was wearing a simple, worn beige trench coat, her hair was tied back in a plain ponytail, and her face was thin, pale, and devoid of any makeup. She was carrying a cheap plastic shopping bag.
When she saw me approaching, her hands gripped the iron bars tightly.
“Marianne...” Natalie called out, her voice raspy, shivering in the cool drizzle.
I stopped ten feet away from the gate, keeping my hands folded in my coat pockets.
“Why are you here, Natalie?” I asked calmly.
Natalie looked down at her muddy shoes, her lips trembling. The arrogance that had defined her whole life had completely vanished, replaced by a raw, hollow exhaustion.
“Dad’s car was repossessed yesterday,” Natalie whispered, tears welling up in her red-rimmed eyes. “Mother hasn't stopped screaming for three weeks. I’m working forty hours a week at a dry cleaner’s counter, Marianne... I make fourteen dollars an hour.”
I said nothing, listening quietly.
“I brought you this,” Natalie said, reaching into her plastic bag, pulling out a small, tarnished silver box.
She pushed the box through the iron bars of the gate.
I walked forward and took the box. I opened the lid.
Inside lay Grandmother Rose’s antique silver brooch—the item I had intended to give Natalie on her wedding day before she pushed me into the fountain.
“Dad tried to sell it to a pawn shop last night to pay his back rent,” Natalie sobbed, covering her face with her hands. “I took it out of his coat pocket while he was sleeping and ran away. I knew... I knew it belonged to you.”
I looked at the silver brooch, then at my sister weeping through the iron bars of my gate.
For months, I had thought about what I would feel if Natalie ever came back begging. I thought I would feel triumph, or cold anger, or bitter satisfaction.
Instead, I felt only a quiet, sad pity.
“Why did you push me, Natalie?” I asked softly. “That afternoon in the courtyard... why did you do it?”
May you like
Natalie looked up through her tears, wiping her nose with her wet sleeve.
“Because you were always real, Marianne,” Natalie wept. “Mother and Dad made me live in a lie. Everything had to be perfect, expensive, and fake. But you... you had Grandmother’s love. You had her stories. You had her dress. Even in that faded blue dress, you were better than me, and I hated myself for it.”
