My Wealthy Grandmother Left Me a Single Brass Key and No Inheritance
By four in the afternoon, the rain had stopped, leaving the brick driveway of the Oakhaven estate damp and dark.
I found Linda in the backyard, standing near the old stone wall where the climbing roses had grown wild and tangled over the last several seasons.
She was wearing her heavy canvas work jacket and a pair of mud-stained gardening gloves, a wooden crate of bare-root yellow rose bushes sitting on the grass near her boots.
“The soil is soft enough to dig,” Linda said as I approached, not looking up from her task of clearing the dead briars with a pair of long shears.
“Let me help,” I said, kneeling down on the damp earth without worrying about the knees of my trousers.
I took the small hand trowel from the grass and began to scoop out the dark, rich dirt, smelling the wet compost and the sharp scent of bruised cedar needles.
“Your grandmother bought these yellow ones three years ago,” Linda said, her voice slow and deliberate as she reached into the crate to lift a dormant root. “She kept them in the cold cellar because she said the ground wasn’t ready yet.”
