Searching For- Stepmom S Gardener Surprise In-a... -

The search had begun as a whispered obsession. For three summers, Leo had watched from the shaded porch of his father’s estate as the gardener worked. But the gardener was no elderly man in overalls. She was Mara—his stepmother’s twenty-three-year-old assistant landscape architect—with sun-streaked hair tied in a loose knot, dirt smudged like war paint on her cheekbone, and arms that could lift a fifty-pound bag of topsoil without strain.

Leo watched Mara’s face crumple and smooth in the same breath. “I never knew her,” she whispered. “Celeste told me she died when I was a baby. But she didn’t die. She was buried —not in the ground, but in here.” She tapped her chest. “And Celeste knew. Celeste hid this box. Probably the same day she hired my father as the groundskeeper and started her affair with yours.” Searching for- Stepmom s Gardener Surprise in-A...

“Not a grave. A revelation.” She jumped down into the pit and pointed her light at the exposed earth. “I’ve been searching this garden for months. Celeste hired me to redesign the east lawn, but I kept hitting something when I tried to plant new roses.” The search had begun as a whispered obsession