It began with the book.

She found it on her desk on a Thursday morning, three weeks after the hospital, two weeks after the full account, set on the corner of the desk with the particular and specific precision of something placed rather than left, a hardback with a worn cover she recognized immediately because she had mentioned it once, briefly, in a conversation that had not been about books, a conversation about her mother's garden and what her mother had loved, and she had said: she read this every spring. She said it was the only garden book that understood that gardens were for the people in them, not...