3. SIENNA
SIENNA
I have soil packed under my fingernails, dark and damp. I press my thumb into the bed and feel the give, the quiet resistance of earth that's been watered right, and something in my shoulders loosens for the first time since this morning.
"Mrs. Delvecchio, are you okay down there?" I ask.
She adjusts on the kneeling pillow beside me, one hand steadying against the raised bed. "I'm seventy-two, not dead. I did yoga for forty years. I can pull weeds."
I smile. She has a rhythm to her pulling, slow and certain, and she doesn't rip the roots. I taught her that on her first session. She remembered.
Around us, the other residents move between the raised beds at their own pace, some pruning, some just sitting in the sun.
The sun sits warm on the back of my neck, open and steady, nothing like the sealed air of a conference room, and I wipe my hands on my cargo pants, feeling the grit catch against the fabric.
This is where I make sense. Dirt on my palms. Knees on the ground.
Not in a borrowed navy suit with the collar pressing against my throat every time I swallowed.
This morning, I walked into that conference room and my body remembered every room like it. Cold air. Hard surfaces. Someone else's territory. My pulse had climbed before I reached the door, and by the time I was led inside, my hands were damp against the suit pants.
So I did what I always do. I let the stillness drop over me like a second skin, smoothed my face into something flat and unreachable, and sat down across from the woman who married my father and the man hired to make sure I walked away empty-handed.
Plants do this. It's called stress memory. A drought-conditioned plant, when drought returns, responds faster, mobilizes its defenses with less effort. The cellular damage it sustained the first time reorganized its response architecture. It doesn't forget. It adapts. Becomes harder to kill.
I've been drought-conditioned since I was eight years old.
This morning Paula was like she always is. Predictable. Venomous. The comments designed to land where they'd would cause more damage. I looked at the window while she talked. Kept my hands flat on my thighs. I've heard versions of it for years. My body absorbs it, files it, moves on.
What she says about me stopped mattering a long time ago, because I learned early that correcting someone's version of you only gives them more material.
I hadn't accounted for the lawyer.
My hand closes around a clump of chickweed and I pull. The roots release clean.
Adrian Kade.
Tall, broad-shouldered, dark blonde hair pushed back from his face. Grey eyes that moved through the space with a quiet precision that read as habit rather than effort.
He looked at me when I walked through the door. It was the kind of look that doesn't leave you indifferent.
We shook hands.
When we shook hands, his grip was warm, firm, unhurried.
And when I started to pull back, he didn't let go.
Not forcefully. Not aggressively. And for a half-second my entire awareness narrowed to that single point of contact.
The rest of the room faded. Just his hand on mine, the heat of his palm, the way his grey eyes held mine.
"You're frowning at that weed like it owes you money."
Mrs. Delvecchio is watching me. I realize my grip on the chickweed has tightened past the point of pulling and into the territory of strangling. I let go. Brush the loose soil from my fingers.
"Long morning," I say.
She makes a sound that could be sympathy or amusement and goes back to her section of the bed.
I settle into the rhythm again. Pull, shake, discard. The repetition helps. It always does. The scent of damp mulch and fertilizer grounds me, rich and mineral, the opposite of gardenia perfume and recycled air.
I was twelve when my father told me he was getting married again. I remember standing in the kitchen, feeling something I hadn't felt in for years. Hope. Small and fragile.
Maybe someone would see what was happening. Maybe someone would care. Maybe someone would intervene.
Paula was twenty-two. She moved into the house, redecorated the guest room for herself, and never once asked me a question or gave me attention.
When my father's rages came, she left the room.
When the bruises showed, she didn't look.
She wasn't cruel the way he was cruel. She was absent.
And that was worse. Absence is a choice when you're standing close enough to do something.
I don't think about this often. I'm thinking about it now because that conference room put me back in proximity to people who carry his name, spend his money, and tell his version of the story like it's the only one that exists.
I pull another weed. The roots come up tangled with the ones beside it, and I separate them carefully, keeping the soil structure intact.
"I didn't do anything, officer. I swear."
The voice comes from behind me, loud and theatrical. Alfred is sitting in his wheelchair near the stone bench, both hands raised, grinning at someone approaching from the parking lot.
I look over my shoulder and see Charlie, in her police uniform, walking across the grass with her shoulders squared and her belt heavy with equipment.
The tension in my chest releases into something warm.
"Alfred." I pitch my voice loud enough for Charlie to hear. "You might want to hide your stash."
"It's medicinal," Alfred says, without missing a beat.
Charlie reaches us and points at Alfred. "That's what they all say. I've got my eye on you, sir."
Alfred clutches his chest. "I'm innocent, I swear."
Charlie grins, and then she's beside me, pulling me into a hug that smells like body armor and the vanilla lotion she's used since high school. I hold on a second longer than I usually would. I need it today.
"Thanks for coming all the way out here." I step back, brushing soil off my arms. "I wanted to get your suit back to you today."
"You didn't have to rush." Charlie looks me over, takes in the cargo pants, the dirt, the loose t-shirt. "This is more you anyway."
"Significantly more me. Thank you, again, for letting me borrow it. I owe you."
"You owe me nothing, Sienna." Charlie's voice shifts. The teasing falls away, and what replaces it is steady, direct, weighted with something she doesn't say often but never lets me forget.
"The suit's in the truck. Walk with me?"
We cross the lawn toward the small parking lot.
The garden stretches out on either side of the path, raised beds and container plantings I designed six months ago, the lavender thick and blooming now, purple spikes catching the afternoon sun.
I notice the rosemary needs pruning. I'll do it Thursday.
"Charlie!"
We both turn. Leonor is walking toward us from the side entrance, small and bright-eyed, her cardigan buttoned wrong.
"Look at you." Leonor takes Charlie's hands. "So grown up. In a uniform. Your father must be so proud. How is he?"
The air between us shifts to something thin and careful.
"He is," Charlie says. Her voice doesn't waver. "He's doing well."
"You tell him hello from me, yes? Tell him Leonor says hello."
"I will." Charlie replies with tenderness in her voice.
Leonor pats Charlie's hands once more, smiles at me, and makes her way back inside. We watch her go. The cardigan, the shuffling gait, the way she hums something under her breath as she walks.
Leonor has dementia. We don't correct her anymore. There is no kindness in that correction.
"I'm sorry," I say.
"Stop." Charlie shakes her head once. "It's fine."
We keep walking. Charlie bumps my shoulder with hers. "Speaking of dead fathers. How was the meeting with the lawyer?"
I almost laugh. Charlie delivers everything the same direct and blunt way. The emotional equivalent of ripping a bandage off fast.
"It went as well as it could. Paula was there. In full widow grieving performance."
"And?"
"And I let them know my terms."
Charlie stops walking. "Sienna. We're talking about several millions—"
"I don't want it."
"Your father's estate. The investments alone—"
"I don't want his money, Charlie." My voice comes out hard. I force a softer tone. "I just want the house. I have plans for the house. That's it."
Charlie watches me for a moment. She's good at this, the assessment without pressure. She learned it from the academy, and the few years she's been on the job.
"Okay," she says, not pushing it.
We reach the truck and I open the passenger door, pulling out the garment bag. Charlie takes it and drapes it over her arm, then turns and looks back the way we came. The garden. The raised beds. The residents moving between them in the afternoon light, slow and deliberate, hands in soil.
"This is good, what you're doing here," she says. "Volunteering your time in exchange for Leonor's care."
"It's the least I can do. Leonor always kept an eye on me when I was growing up, whenever her work as the housekeeper let her.
She tried to make sure I was okay, in whatever small ways she could.
" I lean against the side of the truck. "It's good for them to be involved in maintaining the garden.
They get some sun, do physical activity, and socialize.
They have a purpose. And it's good for the business.
Families come visit, they see the garden, they ask who designed it.
I've already picked up a few residential clients from it. "
"Smart." Charlie nods. "How's Viridian Landscape Services doing?" She affects a slight accent on the name of the company I started, somewhere between impressed and mocking.
"Slow. But steady. I don't have to wait tables anymore, so that's good."
"That's a big deal, Sienna."
I shrug.
But it is.
Charlie slings the garment bag over her shoulder and turns to go, then stops. Turns back. The expression on her face has changed, slightly more careful, slightly more deliberate.
"Are you still doing the green guerrilla thing?"
My fingers find the edge of the truck bed. Press against the metal.
"Why?"
"Because there's this kid. Good kid, but he's starting to run with people who aren't. He's angry, bored, no direction. I think it could be good for him."
I don't answer immediately. I let the question sit, let my body process whatever tightened when she said the words.
Green guerrilla.
It's not legal. Not entirely.
It matters more than anything else I do.
"Give him my number," I say.
Charlie smiles. "Done." She takes two steps, stops again. "One of these days, you're going to get in trouble for that."
I watch her walk to her car, uniform catching the light. She raises a hand without turning around.
I stay leaning against the truck. The sun presses warm against my arms. The garden stretches out in front of me, the beds I built, the soil I amended, the plants I chose because they were hardy enough to survive once they took root.
I think about the house in Hidden Hills. What it was. What I'm going to turn it into.
Charlie's right. The green guerrilla work might get me in trouble someday. But I've been in trouble before. The difference is that this time, whatever I'm building is mine.
And I'm not done.