She slipped Horse’s leash over her wrist and slid her phone out of her pocket. She couldn’t wait to send Ash a picture of the flowers. Bird-of-paradise was one of his favorites.

She wedged the toe of her sneaker between the metal rods of the fence and pulled herself up onto the brick. There were only four or five inches she could stand on, so she kept to her tiptoes and flattened herself against the fence, praying no one chose that moment to look out their window.

From this new vantage point, she could see that the birds-of-paradise grew among luscious passionflowers that vined along the ground and up the trellis on the side of the yard. Closer to the fence, in the dappled shade, grew a bed of ferns, lush and every shade of green.

And on the far side, in the brightest sun…

“Holy shit,” Greta murmured. “Is that a fucking banana tree just growing out of the ground?”

“It is,” a voice answered from inside the fence.

Greta shrieked and nearly fell off the brick wall. She grabbed at the fence to catch herself and in doing so dropped her phone. It disappeared into the ferns that covered the ground, and Greta cringed.

A woman rose from a patch of sunlight in the corner of the yard closest to the fence, only two feet from where Greta stood. She was tall, white, and looked to be in her seventies, with long silver hair shot through with black, and she wore a gorgeous dressing gown printed with green and gold foliage, which explained why Greta had failed to notice her.

“God, I’m so sorry,” Greta said, mortified.

The woman chuckled warmly. “Would you like to come in?” she asked.

“In. In? To your garden?”

The woman nodded.

Greta wanted it desperately. She told herself that this was a city and probably you shouldn’t just go into strangers’ beautiful, luscious gardens in cities because they could kill you and use your body as fertilizer for their plants. But at that moment, she didn’t care. If this woman was willing to invite her in after catching her practically draped over her fence, then she couldn’t turn it down.

“I would love to.”

The woman smiled serenely and opened the gate a few paces down. Greta hadn’t even noticed the entrance. On the street side, it had tree boughs growing over it, blocking it from view. It opened in, and Greta unwedged her sneaker from the fence, brushed herself off, and walked through the gate.

“Um, I have a dog here. Is that okay?”

The comment was clearly unnecessary, as Horse could hardly be overlooked since he was big enough to be seen from space.

“It’s fine,” the woman said. “I love dogs.”