To me, those rules were not about being controlling. The house was the last place where Grandma’s presence still felt tangible, and the garden mattered most of all.
The next morning, I discovered she had ignored all of it.
My grandmother Penny treated her garden like a family album. The peonies marked the year I was born. Lavender lined the path because she planted it after recovering from surgery. Roses beside the porch celebrated her anniversary, and white daisies appeared after my first school recital.
When Grandma died, she left me the lake house with a note: “Keep it lived in.”
I repaired what broke but preserved the garden. My husband Zac understood what it meant to me. His sister Kelsey did not.
Two days before her wedding, Kelsey arrived in a panic. A burst pipe had destroyed the restaurant booked for her reception, and every nearby venue was unavailable.
Then she opened her wedding binder to a photo of my lake house.
“We’ll have it there.”
