Chapter 2 - Tabitha’s White Dress in the Garden
Tabitha looked wrong among the roses.
Not because she was beautiful.
She was.
Her ivory satin dress caught the sunlight. Her silver heels flashed against the stone path. Diamonds at her throat scattered little knives of light across her collarbone.
She looked prepared for a victory portrait.
Not a garden.
Not grief.
Not the daughter of a dead man holding pruning shears beside the flowers he loved.
Paige looked at her and understood something she had avoided saying aloud.
Tabitha had not come to visit.
She had come to inspect.
The mansion behind them, the balconies, the garden lamps, the rose beds, the tiled roof, the quiet wealth of the estate—Tabitha’s eyes had already touched all of it like inventory.
Paige’s voice stayed low.
“Who told you tomorrow?”
Tabitha’s mouth curled.
“Calvin doesn’t have to tell you everything anymore.”
The name landed without surprise.
Calvin.
Her ex-husband.
The man who had once stood beside Paige in this same garden and promised her father he would protect her from opportunists.
Then he married one.
Paige did not flinch.
That disappointed Tabitha.
“You really thought he’d choose dirt and dead flowers over an actual future?”
Paige looked at the roses.
“My father called this garden the only honest room on the property.”
Tabitha laughed sharply.
“That sounds like something a dying man would say when he’s losing control.”
Paige’s hand tightened around the pruning shears.
She did not lift them.
She did not threaten.
She only lowered them safely against her leg and kept her other hand near the hidden phone.
Tabitha stepped closer.
“You should be grateful we’re giving you until tomorrow.”
“We?”
“Calvin and I.”
“And Kyle?”
For the first time, Tabitha’s face shifted.
A flicker.
Small but real.
Paige saw it.
Kyle had been her father’s adviser near the end. A polished man with soft hands, expensive glasses, and a habit of speaking to Paige as if grief had reduced her intelligence.
Tabitha recovered with a smile.
“Kyle understands documents. You understand flowers.”
The insult should have hurt.
Instead, it clarified the battlefield.
Paige looked down at the soil beneath the rose bush.
A corner of paper peeked out from under damp leaves.
Her breath caught.
Tabitha noticed her looking.
“What is that?”
May you like
Paige did not answer.
Read Chapter 3 👉 Because Tabitha had mocked Paige for tending flowers, but the roses were hiding the first thing Tabitha had not planned for.
