“I understand,” said Elise, who didn’t. Casually, she asked, “Is this writer anyone I would have heard of?”

“I’d never heard of her,” said Mrs. Jenkins. “Her name is Sarah Vernon, and her agent seems to feel she’s got a breakout book inside of her, and that’s what she’s writing at our place!” Brightening, she said, “I wonder if she’ll thank us in the acknowledgments.”

Elise forced herself to press her lips together, not to scream at the silly woman on the other end of the phone. Elise was seventy-four years old, and she’d tended gardens on Elder Island since she’d opened her business more than fifty years ago. She was the best of the three gardeners on the island. In the annual Elder Island Garden Competition, her gardens had taken the top prizes for almost each of the last twenty years. Her espaliered roses were especially coveted. Elise had a special technique, honed over the years, a way of coaxing and training that got the flowers to bloom against a brick wall in sweet-scented, stunning profusion, all summer long. Off-season maintenance was the secret to her success… and if she couldn’t prune the Jenkinses’ roses, years of her hard work would be undone.

“Mrs. Jenkins, I hear what you’re saying. But I want to be clear: If I don’t cut those roses back, you’re not going to be happy at all when you come in the spring.”

Mrs. Jenkins sighed. “I know it’s a sacrifice. But we agreed to this woman’s terms.”

Elise ended the call and shook her head. People had no idea what it took to train roses, to have them climb up a wall and spread out along a trellis. They thought it just happened, like magic, that it wasn’t the result of careful, thoughtful, deliberate attention, and hard work. Years of work. And now, to be told that she couldn’t give her plants what they needed!

Outrageous, she thought, the wrinkles around her lips deepening as she frowned. But that was summer people for you; clueless and rich, toddling around like giant babies in the fog their money generated, not caring who they hurt. They just had no idea.

Sarah woke up the next morning from another terrible dream, the now familiar guilt pressing down on her chest like a millstone, the same question repeating itself more and more loudly.

What have I done?