Flower Girl

When Chelsea was two, I carried her on my hip through our garden, her tiny fingers plucking rose petals and bouncing along blue hydrangeas. I held her up to a honeysuckle vine, touched a bead nectar to her tongue. She grinned at the sweet taste, a honeysuckle smile. My Chelsea. My flower girl.

When Chelsea turned six, I taught her how much water each plant needed, and how to click the hose’s nozzle so the spray didn’t dig into the mulch. Chelsea showered the flowers with satisfaction, giggled when she sprayed the dog, awed as a faded rainbow drifted through the mist.

When Chelsea was twelve, we buried the dog in the garden. Old age, I explained while she cried in my arms. I showed her how to use a trowel to dig a hole deep enough for a proper burial, and how to plant lavender to mark the grave.

When Chelsea was fourteen, she had her first breakup. She ran into the garden and tore into the roses. Sturdy thorns snagged her hands as red petals danced and scattered across the grass. When she cooled off, I pulled their spikes with tweezers, bandaged her palms. The next day she apologized and used my shears despite her injuries to prune the broken stems. While we tended to the roses, I told her men would come and go, and hurt her like she hurt the garden, but like any plant, prune the damage and it will grow stronger.

When Chelsea was eighteen, we toured a prospective college, not far from our home. She pointed to the student garden – worn chicken wire and rusty t-posts – and swore to nurse its wounds. During her first weeks, she posted pictures to her social media. New friends. Beautiful work she’d done in the college plot. A tall, handsome boy she had started to date, honeysuckle grin at his side.

When Chelsea returned home for the holidays, she mumbled and wore a pale complexion. She spent most of her break alone in our garden. Her hand shook while tending to the winter jasmine, and I counted every tear that soaked the cold dirt. That night, I perused her social media account.

The pictures of the boy were gone.

The next morning, I asked her about the boy, thinking it was another breakup. She broke like tree branches under wet snow. Thorns lodged in my throat as she detailed the worst things a parent could imagine. My Chelsea. My flower girl. No amount of pruning could restore the damage done to my daughter. We cried in each other’s arms for a long time.

That night, I combed through the boy’s social media. He was a few years older than Chelsea. A member of a fraternity. Studied business. First born of a wealthy family. Hiked nature trails near campus on the weekends. In every post, he grinned like the world was his garden, like he could pluck any flower he wished.

When Chelsea testified at the boy’s trial, his sleazy attorney dragged Chelsea’s name through the mud, objected to her answers, asked questions designed to make my daughter break. She remained composed through it all, a firm tree against a wicked storm.

When the boy cried at sentencing, begging for leniency, I wanted to leap over the guardrail, shovel a hole in his chest, rip out the weeds covering his heart, and strangle him with their roots.

I had to further prune my desires when the judge sentenced him to probation.

A week after the trial, I found Chelsea in the bathroom at home, burnt aluminum foil at her feet, foam forming at the edges of her purple lips. I carried her - the way I used to carry her - to the car and rushed her to the emergency room. Nurses reversed the overdose but insisted on a psychological evaluation. I brought our best flowers from the garden to cheer her up, but she only stared out the hospital window, her honeysuckle grin buried in the past.

While Chelsea recovered in the hospital, I purchased fifty pounds of garden lime, a roll of six mil plastic sheeting, a new shovel, heavy-duty shears, and a pack of lavender seeds.

While Chelsea was admitted to the crisis center, I took up hiking. I bathed in the forest’s creaking winds, its fresh pine air. Wildflowers flooded open meadows and streams echoed from shaded glens. I hiked every morning, trekking different trails each time. After a hike, I expanded our garden, dreaming of the new addition, just for Chelsea.

Eventually, I found him. The boy drove a cherry red Jeep with ducks littering the dashboard. He hiked shirtless, wore black shades with orange polarized lenses, took selfies every few hundred feet. He spoke casually with those sharing the trail, especially women, as if an ankle monitor wasn’t hidden beneath his calf-length socks. He hiked early on weekend mornings. Alone. Carefree, his apparent punishment nothing more than an inconvenience. A small weed to pluck from a garden. Except he didn’t know how to tend gardens or pluck weeds.

But I did.

By the time Chelsea completed her months long rehabilitation program, the search party had been called off.

By the time Chelsea decided to return to college, the news reports had died down.

By the time Chelsea found a job as a florist on campus, the boy’s missing posters had withered to torn flaps of yellow paper.

Once enough time had passed, the boy no more than a terrible memory, I held Chelsea at the waist in our garden, guiding her towards the new juniper trees. I pulled her through their prickly branches to the rectangular plot they now concealed.

A hidden lavender patch in full bloom.

The calming scent drifted around us. Chelsea released a breath she seemed to be holding in for the last year. She held my hand, met my eyes, and my flower girl finally sprouted that honeysuckle smile.