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.
The olive-green crop top was practical for the warm weather, while the oversized camouflage cargo shorts had large pockets for small tools. Her tan suede boots were sturdy enough for working around the uneven flowerbed, and the little black handbag carried her phone, wallet, house keys, and work identification.
Her short platinum-white hair had become her signature style.
She'd first cut it several years earlier after growing tired of spending too much time styling longer hair before work.
The platinum color began as an experiment.
Her mother loved it immediately.
"Now you look like somebody who knows exactly what she wants," Lorraine said.
Talia laughed.
"Is that good?"
Her mother smiled.
"Very."
That morning, Talia caught her reflection in the hallway mirror and remembered the conversation.
Then she walked outside with a pair of gardening shears.
The air smelled of freshly cut grass.
A few birds moved through the trees.
And the red roses shone against the white picket fence.
For the first time since her mother's funeral, Talia felt ready to spend an entire morning tending the garden.
She knelt beside the first rosebush.
Then began trimming damaged stems.
At eight-fifteen, her neighbor Margaret Ellis appeared near the fence.