Her mother, Lorraine Monroe, had lived there for thirty-eight years.
Lorraine had been a school librarian, a church volunteer, and the kind of woman who remembered birthdays even when the people celebrating them forgot. She knew the names of neighborhood children, kept extra groceries for families having difficult months, and treated every flower she planted as though it were an important member of the household.
The roses had been her pride.
She began planting them the year Talia was born.
Over time, she expanded the garden along the front fence, adding deep red blooms, pale pink climbing roses, and fragrant white varieties that attracted butterflies throughout spring.
When the weather turned warm, Lorraine spent hours outside.
She pruned branches.
And talked to the plants while neighbors walked past.
As a little girl, Talia once asked why her mother spoke to flowers.
Lorraine smiled.
"Because they listen better than most people."
"But they can't talk back."
Those afternoons became some of the happiest memories of her childhood.
And when Lorraine died after a brief illness eleven months earlier, Talia found herself unable to visit the garden without feeling the weight of the loss.
For a long time, she'd paid someone to maintain the property.
She lived in another part of the state because of her work, and returning to the family home felt emotionally exhausting.
But recently she'd decided to restore the house herself, one room and one garden bed at a time.
That Saturday was supposed to be the beginning.
Talia placed the mug beside the sink and walked toward the front door.
She'd arrived the previous evening with a small suitcase, gardening gloves, and a bag of tools.
Her father, Benjamin Monroe, had died when she was twenty-one.
Lorraine never remarried.
Instead, she spent her later years filling the house with books, family photographs, and enough flowering plants to make the property resemble a small botanical garden.
The house belonged to Talia now.
The estate had been settled.
The deed was properly recorded.
And the property taxes were current.
She had no intention of selling.
Several real estate agents had contacted her after Lorraine's death, but she declined their offers.
The house represented too much history.
Talia remembered learning to ride a bicycle on the driveway.
Doing homework at the kitchen table.
And waiting anxiously in the living room on the day she learned she'd been accepted into a state university.
She also remembered returning home after completing her first law-enforcement investigative assignment, when Lorraine stood on the front steps holding a homemade cake.
Her mother hadn't understood every detail of Talia's work.
But she understood that it mattered to her daughter.
And she always reminded Talia that professional titles meant very little if a person forgot how to treat others.
"Being important isn't the same as being decent," Lorraine used to say.
Talia smiled faintly at the memory.
Then she opened the front door.
The rose garden waited beneath the bright morning sun.
She changed into her comfortable gardening clothes shortly after seven.