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Theresa grabbed her raffia purse and locked the car before bending to check her reflection in the driver’s-side window. She touched her dark brown bangs, straightened the collar of her teal cotton poplin shirtdress, slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder, and then made for the front gate from which hung a wooden sign reading “Rosewood House.”

After unlatching the gate, Theresa started down the brick path that disappeared between densely planted bushes and trees. She was a little embarrassed to find her heart pounding. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t ever fielded calls from family members who were upset about a misprint in their loved one’s obituary—whether real or perceived. This, however, felt different.

“I imagine you would like to set the record straight?” Miss Pearce had asked on the telephone, her tone high-handed almost to the point of arrogance.

“Y-yes.” Theresa had cleared her throat. “If there is a correction to be made, that is. May I ask how you know that there was a first Mrs. Whitley?”

“Come to my home tomorrow at nine o’clock.” Miss Pearce rattled off an address and then, without warning, hung up before Theresa could press her further.

Theresa reached a break in the brush and found herself at the mouth of a wide, sun-drenched garden surrounding a two-story Arts and Crafts house of dark brown wood shingles and beams with sage-painted walls. There was a porch reachable by a short set of steps that spanned the left side of the house, and to the right were three sash windows hung with curtains.

It was beautiful, but it was nothing compared to the front yard.

Theresa didn’t know much about plants, but she recognized buds of roses bursting into bloom. Bees flitted from a low pink flower that looked a little like her mom’s geranium and the long, elegant stems of lavender, which she could smell even from where she stood.

A few steps into the garden, Theresa stopped, distracted by a pompom of a pearl pink flower waving gracefully on the morning breeze. The cluster of petals was so perfectly ruffled she couldn’t resist the urge to reach out and touch—

“Morning!”

Theresa jumped back and shoved her hands in the slash pockets of her dress. She turned and spotted a man kneeling in one of the flower beds a good thirty feet away. He wore a blue sun-faded Dodgers cap that he pushed back on his forehead to squint at her, the deeply tanned skin around his eyes crinkling.

“Are you the reporter?” he called.

“I am,” she shouted back, regaining her composure a bit. “Theresa Johnson.”

He stood and brushed his hands off on a pair of dust-covered khaki shorts that looked as though they had been washed to softness.

“I’m Matt Saunders. Miss Pearce asked me to keep an eye out for you,” he said. “She’s around the back. Come on.”

He turned and headed for the side of the house. Theresa hurried to catch up with him. She hadn’t liked the nearly rainless spring any more than the rest of Pasadena, but at least it meant that the grass was dry. If she ruined her brown leather shoes with mud, she wouldn’t be able to replace them until at least her next paycheck.

“What do you report on?”

“Obituaries,” she said. “Although occasionally I’ll fill in on local stories if we’re short-staffed.”

That normally only happened during national holidays or when the more senior reporters were off on vacation, but Matt didn’t need to know that.

“But mostly you write about people who’ve died,” he said.

She’d heard it all before. Even her own mother had been dismayed when Theresa had phoned her to say that she was moving to the West Coast for a job in Obits.

“But, sweetheart, isn’t that a bit… morbid?” her mother had asked.

“It’s a job, Mom,” she’d said. “It’s what I’ve been working toward for years.”

“You wouldn’t have to work at all if you hadn’t turned down Eddie Foreman,” Mom had argued down the crackling line. “I know you think you were too young, but I was eighteen when I married your father.”

Not wanting to rehash the same argument she had with her mother every time they spoke, she’d begged off the call claiming—correctly—that long distance was costing her a fortune.

“I tell people’s stories,” Theresa told Matt. “An obituary is the last record of most people’s lives. Their relatives rely on me to get it right.”

Which was precisely why she was there before her shift started, trying to figure out how she’d gotten things so wrong on Guy Whitley’s obit that she’d left off an entire wife.

“I guess I hadn’t thought about it like that,” said Matt.

“What do you do?” she asked.

“Did you notice the sign for the Rosewood Nursery about a quarter of a mile down the road?” he asked.