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"I insulted her parties," Lowell said. "How am I supposed to get invited to one now?"

"I think she was really drunk. She probably won't remember you said anything."

"She doesn't even know who I am," Lowell said. "I always gave her extra scoops at the store last summer and she would wink & I 'thought' she winked at me. Maybe she just has astigmatism? Damn it!"

This was Rose's first meeting with the person who would become her best friend. But in that moment, all she could do was tap him on the shoulder awkwardly, afraid that if she tapped any harder, he might crumble. Maybe it was time for her to go. She stood, shouldered her way through the pumping crowd until she was back in the foyer. Which was just when Hart showed up again.

"I found this in one of the dressers upstairs," he said, handing over a Persian Blue tee. Rose stretched it out to read what the white block letters spelled. FBI: FEMALE BODY INSPECTOR.

If there was ever a sign to go, this was it. "I think I'm gonna head out." "You sure?" Hart asked. "The party is—"

"Yeah, I ruined some kid's night. And that girl already hates me."

Hart followed the path of Rose's pointed finger all the way to Heather, perched on the armrest of the living room sofa. He let out a breath. "So, you've met my sister."

'Of course', Rose thought. Her first night in her new hometown and she felt, in so many big and small ways, Dead on Arrival.

She made up her mind. "It was nice to meet you, Hart."

Walking down the steps of the wraparound porch, Rose set out to leave behind the worst night of her life. But what she thought of as the worst night of her life would turn out to be the most important. She'd met her first love, her biggest enemy, and her best friend, all in the span of an hour.

And she still hadn't even heard about the garden.

3

It was too early in the morning to be angry at a countertop appliance and yet, Rose stared at the coffeepot with a burning desire to chuck it out the window. A baby could probably operate it, but Rose, for the life of her, could not get the thing to work. This was not how she was used to starting her day.

In New York, her routine was sacred. Mom would be at work before the rest of the world woke up, and Dad's day only began "whenever the muse beckoned," so he was asleep into the double-digit hours of the morning. Which meant Rose could pop a K-Cup into the Keurig and listen to its soothing whir in peace.

But Mom got the Keurig in the divorce, and now Rose was left with this clunky relic from a bygone era. Dry as a bone, the coffeepot seemed to taunt her.

"DAD!"

Somewhere deep in the two-bedroom house, the sound of packing tape being ripped from a cardboard box abruptly stopped, and Dad came scrambling into the kitchen. Jim Pauly had the general look of someone who hadn't sold a book in six years and, since the divorce, could no longer afford to wait for the muse to lure him out of bed. He was already dressed for his first day at his new nine-to-five.

Rose wanted to be mad at him for the fact that he'd yanked her out of school with four days left in her junior year. She wanted to be mad at him for letting Mom take the Keurig. But the sight of him— overdressed in a rumpled shirt and tie for a job at a hardware store—made Rose's anger melt away, just a little.

She pointed at the coffeepot like it was an airplane engine. "I don't know how that works."

Dad exhaled. He filled the reservoir with water and grabbed a Folgers canister and filter from the nearest cabinet. The whole process looked pretty simple. Rose refused to learn how to do it.

After the party last night, she'd found her way back home. Turned out having the only Blush Pink house in the neighborhood made it easy to find. She'd gotten back so late that Dad had already gone to bed. Rose had been wired, though. She'd taken a shower to get rid of all remnants of cherry slushie. But when she got into bed, she couldn't sleep. She stared at the blank wall in front of her, thinking of the boy she'd met at the gas station store. The muse called on her, and much like her dad, Rose was beholden to it. She flung her blanket off and used the flashlight on her phone to search for her milk crate full of paints. She found it in the living room and dragged it through the quiet house, stopping only when she reached the one windowless, garish pink wall in her bedroom.

Dad had given her a hard time about her decision to bring the crate with her. He said there was plenty of paint in Connecticut. But it was the principle of it. Some of the paint tubes had never even been opened, and if he thought that Rose would part with them, he didn't know her at all. To drive the point home, Rose had suggested her dad not pack his 1946 Olympia manual typewriter. It weighed about three hundred pounds, sounded like a jackhammer with every press of a key, and hadn't produced a single word of prose in about three years. Dad dropped the issue after that.