23 May Callum’s Garden

Part I

Braden Powell had won the Graybury Harvest Fair seven years running, and every time the result was the same: no one even came close. His tomatoes were massive, their skins taut and gleaming. His pumpkins bent the planks of their crates, thick-stemmed and shaped with unnatural symmetry. Even his jalapeños—deep green and slick with oil—were sought after by canning grandmothers three towns over. Whenever asked about his methods, he would offer a warm chuckle and deflect with a practiced shrug, one hand brushing invisible dirt from his jeans.

Behind his house on Hickory Lane, Braden’s garden stretched magnificently. Vines looped from trellises, thick with ripening fruit, and beds of vegetables marched in precise rows. All of it sat behind a ten-foot fence topped with rusted nail heads and vine choke. No one had seen the inside of that garden in years. Still, the townsfolk adored him.

He showed up to the farmers’ market every season with hand-stained boxes and baskets overflowing, selling out within days. Children loved the honeyed snap peas. Their parents loved the perfect slicing tomatoes and the low price tags. In a town of 1,500, where everyone greeted each other by name and still returned misdelivered packages door-to-door, Braden was a fixture. Reserved, yes, but dependable. Friendly, if you didn’t push him.

He rarely lingered in public. He shook hands at the fair, nodded at the diner, and waved while hauling mulch across his backyard. What little time he spent away from the garden, he spent with his wife—though few people ever saw her.

Meredith Powell, once Meredith Sutter, had lived a different life before Graybury. Before the locked windows, the drawn curtains, the years spent in soft silence behind her husband’s weathered voice and polite evasions. Braden had met her four years after his divorce, when he was still half-empty and uncertain of whether solitude suited him. She, on the other hand, had long since given up on company. Her first husband had taken his own life in a hotel room after the body of their missing son, Callum, had been discovered in a drainage ditch six months after his disappearance. Meredith had never returned to full daylight after that—not in any sense that mattered.

She spent most of her time in the back den, a darkened space she never referred to as a room at all, just “my corner.” Inside, old videotapes of Callum’s birthdays played on an outdated television set that flickered with scan lines and muffled laughter. She would sit in the recliner, arms curled around her knees, her chin resting on the same pillow her son had used during his last Christmas alive. Braden never asked her to stop watching the tapes, and she never asked him to leave the garden alone.

There was a rhythm to their pain.

On the evening news, the anchor’s voice broke rhythm. Braden stood at the counter, washing dirt from beneath his nails when he heard Meredith’s breath catch.

“The district court overturned the conviction this morning. Citing mishandled evidence and procedural misconduct, Judge Anselme ordered the immediate release of Christopher Weller, convicted two years ago of possession of child pornography and suspected in two unsolved disappearances…”

She didn’t scream, didn’t curse or cry, and made no move to strike the television. Instead, her body seemed to retreat inward, shoulders curving like petals curling from heat. Braden shut off the sink, dried his hands, and stepped into the den. She didn’t look up.

A long silence held the room together.

That night, after the tape of Callum’s seventh birthday had looped three times—Meredith’s voice singing “Happy Birthday” to no one as the glow of the candle danced across a decades-old home video—Braden found himself standing at the back door with a shovel in one hand and a heavy knot in his chest. He hadn’t planned to bring it. He told himself he was going to check the compost heap. But once he stepped into the moonlit yard, the air too still, the sky too low, the shovel felt necessary.

He walked to the edge of the largest plot—the one where the tomatoes grew in perfect lines and the ground never seemed to dry out completely—and began to dig. He worked the blade into the loam and turned it over, again and again, until the sharp scent of disturbed earth filled his lungs and the ache in his arms dulled the noise in his mind.

Above him, one dim light glowed in the back den’s window.

He looked up from where he stood, the hole at his feet shallow and loose, barely wide enough for a bushel. He clenched the shovel handle tighter. In that moment, standing there ankle-deep in a patch of rich, upturned soil, Braden felt something shift inside him—not a decision exactly, but the weight of inevitability sliding into place.

Part II

Christopher Weller lived in a gray duplex at the edge of town, on the stretch of Cedar Avenue where mailboxes leaned sideways and the sidewalks cracked open. Braden drove past twice before he was certain—same man from the news, same pale, collapsed features, same sunken eyes that had once stared at courtroom cameras without flinching. Released on a technicality, the broadcast had said, as if a missing signature could erase the images found on his hard drive.

Braden didn’t act immediately. He watched first.

Over three days, he learned Weller’s routine. He walked the block every afternoon, circling the old chain-link park near the middle school. He sat on the rusted bench beneath the sugar maple and smoked menthols, never looking at anyone directly but never fully looking away either. He carried no phone. No groceries. He made no visits, received no guests. He watched the children. That was enough.

On the fourth day, Braden brought gloves and a length of pipe wrapped in cloth. He parked two streets away, walked a loop around the park to make sure no one lingered, and waited behind the trees. The sun had begun to drop below the power lines when Weller made his slow approach to the bench.

The strike was clean. One blow to the back of the skull, and Weller dropped. There was no shout, no flailing. Braden stood over him, heart clenching, unsure if the man was dead until the shallow, breathy wheeze stopped. He looked around. No one had seen.

He wrapped the body in a painter’s tarp, one he had purchased that morning without quite admitting to himself why. The blood had already begun to soak through, but the plastic held.

By nightfall, the back gate to the Powell property creaked open on its hinges. Braden dragged the bundle to the compost heap at the far edge of the garden and dropped it beside the old canisters of kitchen waste and crumbling leaf bags. He rested only long enough to wipe the sweat from his face before lifting the shovel.

He dug methodically. Each scoop of soil thudded onto the growing pile beside him, dense and dark. The deeper he went, the more the scent of rot mixed with the scent of earth. At last, he rolled the body in and covered it first with a layer of grass clippings and sawdust, then with the same soil he had just displaced. He pressed it flat with the blade of the shovel, smoothing the top like a man tamping down mulch around a seedling.

He wasn’t driven by rage or madness. What moved him was calculation. He had done what the court had failed to do. He had ensured Meredith would not have to hear that name again. He had created a silence where before there had only been the drone of injustice.

Inside the house, no lights turned on. Meredith had not noticed his absence, or if she had, had not left her corner.

Braden showered, changed, and stood over the sink watching the water run off his hands, tinged red at first, then clear. He scrubbed his nails until they burned.

The following morning, he stepped into the garden and stopped cold.

The soil above the burial site had shifted overnight. Not outwardly, but in quality. It was as though the ground itself had fed. The surface shimmered with a faint moisture, though it had not rained. The nearby tomato plants had extended their stalks by at least three inches. One had split its stem in the middle of the night, heavy with fruit too large to support. The leaves, which had yellowed during last week’s dry spell, now gleamed dark green and rigid.

Braden approached the nearest vine. He plucked one of the new tomatoes. It was larger than his palm, nearly the size of a grapefruit, and its skin had an unnatural sheen. No blemishes. No bite marks from insects. No bruising along the stem. He took it inside and sliced it open on the counter. The flesh was thick, the color a deep red with almost no seeding. It smelled rich—overripe but not spoiled.

He said nothing. He wrapped the slices, placed them in the fridge, and returned to the garden.

The rest of the day passed with quiet labor. He trimmed dead branches, refastened vine ties, and spread a fresh layer of straw between the rows. All the while, his eyes returned—again and again—to the spot near the compost bin. By sundown, he had harvested two bushels, both heavier than any he had brought in this early in the season before. He left them near the back door and went inside.

That night, Braden sat in the living room while Meredith remained in the den. He could hear the home videos playing on a loop again, the soft flicker of Callum’s voice, young and excited, counting candles over some long-forgotten birthday cake.

At some point, the sound stopped. He looked toward the hallway, expecting to see her emerge for tea or toast. But the door remained closed.

The next morning, Meredith woke just after sunrise, already dressed in a cardigan she had not worn in months. She stood in the kitchen doorway holding an empty tea mug and said, “I think I slept through the night.”

Braden nodded once and poured the water.

She said nothing else.

That evening, Braden lay awake beside her. The window above their bed stood open just a crack, letting in the smell of soil and crushed leaves. The garden was quiet. So was he.

Part III

The next morning, Meredith stood at the stove, gently stirring a small pot of milk over low heat. The kitchen window was open, letting in the distant rustle of leaves from the far end of the garden. A pot of chamomile bloomed on the sill, its stems reaching toward the early light. She had moved it there herself.

Braden paused in the doorway, still dusty from turning compost. He said nothing. Meredith glanced at him briefly, then returned her attention to the pot.

“I should plant sweet alyssum this year,” she said, her voice almost conversational. “It was Callum’s favorite. He used to call them ‘snow flowers.’” She poured the milk into her mug and stirred it with a long-handled spoon, tapping once on the rim before setting it down.

Braden nodded. He watched her walk past him with quiet purpose, mug in hand, her sweater sleeves pulled down over her palms. She didn’t return to the den. Instead, she pulled out a chair at the table and looked through the window into the garden, her eyes distant.

That afternoon, Braden found himself rereading a newspaper clipping from the local bulletin board at the co-op. The man’s name was Tobias Ruhl, a registered offender recently relocated to the northern edge of Graybury. The address was familiar. It was close to the trailhead by the woods—the path children took on their way to and from the lake during summer break.

Ruhl had served time. He had been out on parole for less than six months. According to the article, he had failed to register in the next county and had been forced to relocate again. The charges had involved minors, a camera, and a parent’s suspicion that led to a police search. Nothing beyond possession. But the intent, Braden believed, was there. It always was.

He began walking the trails near the woods three days a week, alternating the time of day, keeping his presence casual. He saw Ruhl twice—once standing near the treeline at dusk, and again crouched near the side of the trail with a lens in hand, pointed down the hill toward the water’s edge. Children played there most evenings. Braden never approached.

The second burial required less effort.

He waited until the following Monday, just after the recycling trucks had finished their routes. The cul-de-sac near Ruhl’s temporary home was quiet, the porch light broken, the front walk cluttered with sodden mailers and broken sticks. Braden arrived before dark, dressed like any gardener on an errand—sun hat, gloves, khakis, and a trunk filled with mulch bags.

Ruhl’s door was unlocked. Braden stepped inside, pipe in hand. It was quick. The man fell onto the kitchen linoleum and didn’t get up.

The body joined the compost pile before midnight. This time, Braden did not wait for the soil to cool. He shoveled the pit open with quick, rhythmic motions, breathing through his mouth as he layered straw and soil with mechanical precision. The odor of rot and sweat mixed with the hot, coppery scent of blood, thickening the air. He pressed the soil flat and stood over it as the moon passed through the clouds overhead.

In the morning, the change was unmistakable.

The eastern plot, where the squash had long struggled against root rot, now rose in dense, velvet-green coils. The vines doubled back over themselves as if they were reaching for something beneath the ground. Tiny blossoms lined the runners—dozens of them—bright orange and open to the sun. Even the peppers had darkened, their skins glossy and hard, clustered in tight, symmetrical groupings along the stems.

Braden spent the early hours harvesting again. The baskets grew heavy fast, and by noon, he had set aside more produce than he typically gathered in a week.

When he stepped inside to wash, he passed Meredith in the hallway. She had come from the den, her hands empty, eyes unfocused.

She paused, looked down at his boots, and said, “You missed a spot.”

Braden glanced down. A dark smear crossed the outer edge of one sole, clinging to the ridges in a streak that no longer looked like dirt.

Meredith didn’t wait for a reply. She walked to the kitchen, opened the cabinet above the sink, and removed the small brass key that hung from a ribbon on the inside of the door. She stepped out the back door and across the yard, her movements calm and direct.

Braden watched from the window.

She reached the garden gate, slid the key into the rusted lock, turned it once, then twice. She gave the handle a firm tug to confirm the latch had caught, then placed the key back on its ribbon and shut the cabinet behind her.

She did not look at him.

That night, she went to bed early. Braden joined her later, the room still carrying the faint trace of tomato vines and cut stems drifting in through the window.

He lay beside her, hands folded over his chest, staring into the ceiling shadows.

In the den, the television remained silent. For the first time since Weller’s release, no tapes played. There was no faint echo of birthday songs, no static-laced laughter from a dead boy’s seventh year. Just the soft hum of the ceiling fan, and the rustling leaves outside, shifting in a wind he could not feel.

Part IV

Deputy Marla Hayes had grown up three counties west but had come to Graybury for the same reason most people did: it was quiet. No snarled traffic or city-wide alerts. The nights stayed quiet here. A good place to forget what bigger places had done to you. The police department consisted of four other uniforms and one chief who’d been “temporary” since 2016. It was a peaceful job, most days—parking violations, barking dogs, the occasional liquor-fueled fight over unpaid property lines.

That peace, however, was not blind. Marla paid attention.

Over the past three months, she had filed three missing persons notices from neighboring counties. All men. All transient, loosely tied to Graybury through parole officers, known haunts, or court records. One, a sex offender who had failed to register. Another, a man recently released on voyeurism charges. The third—a drifter known to have been sleeping behind the old theater downtown—had been picked up twice for indecent exposure near a middle school bus stop.

Each man had vanished without trace or warrant. No witnesses. No sightings. But each disappearance occurred within days of Braden Powell’s largest market yields. That in itself wasn’t evidence—coincidence made convenient company in a town this small—but Marla knew patterns, and she trusted her instincts more than protocols.

She began making quiet visits near Powell’s property. No accusations. No questions. Just drive-bys, conducted at odd hours. She noted the condition of the garden gate, the smell of fresh compost, the improbable symmetry of the vegetables reaching over the top of the fence. It looked… staged. As if nature had been rehearsed.

She asked a few neighbors what they thought of Braden. All spoke highly of him. Polite. Kind. Soft-spoken. Most never saw Meredith anymore but assumed she was still inside. They spoke about Braden’s tomatoes like one might speak of summer storms—potent, reliable, and a little eerie.

One neighbor, an older man who fed stray cats and spent his nights watching squirrels fight over his shed roof, said he’d seen something a week ago. Just movement, he clarified. Something pacing along the garden beds past midnight. Something tall. “Didn’t look like Braden,” he added. “Didn’t move right.”

Marla wrote it down, nodded, and thanked him. She made a note to return later that week, but she didn’t know what she’d be looking for.

Across town, Braden dragged a body through the gravel path behind the shed.

This one had taken more effort. The man, a thirty-eight-year-old with a record and a fondness for parks, had put up a fight when cornered near the county line. Braden’s jaw still ached where the elbow had landed, and his left hand bore the imprint of a bite that had broken the skin. But the fight had ended as the others had. Now, he worked quickly, muting each shovel strike with a flattened rhythm, careful not to overturn more earth than needed. The pit was shallower than the last. The soil was harder, less cooperative. Still, he got the body down and covered before dawn.

Near the back shed, just inside the lean-to where old flower pots and tools were stored, something waited for him.

Meredith sat on the edge of the low stoop, her feet bare against the worn flagstones, a light sweater draped over her shoulders. Her hands rested in her lap. At her side lay a small trowel—dull steel, wooden handle worn smooth. A smear of brown and something darker clung to its edge. Braden recognized it immediately. It had gone missing three days earlier. He had assumed it buried under mulch or left near the compost.

She had found it instead, tucked beneath the broken pottery that had once held Callum’s alyssum. She had said nothing when it disappeared. Now she said nothing still.

Braden stood there, one boot half in shadow, his breath slowing as he met her eyes. She didn’t look away. She didn’t ask. She simply waited.

He stepped forward, bent down, and picked up the trowel. His fingers brushed hers briefly. She was cold, but not trembling.

She rose, leaving him alone at the threshold. The door to the house remained ajar behind her, the screen creaking gently as it settled. He stood there for a moment longer, the trowel in his hand, the scent of blood and fertilizer still clinging to his sleeves. The early morning light stretched over the edge of the eastern plot. The squash vines were already beginning to curl toward the sun.

Inside, Meredith made tea without speaking. She moved about the kitchen with the same quiet rhythm she had once used when Callum napped in the next room. Braden watched her from the doorway, trowel still in hand. When she finished steeping the leaves, she set the mug on the table, took the key from the cabinet, and walked to the garden gate.

She locked it again. Then she returned to the house, brushing past him as if he were only part of the furniture.

That night, the tapes in the den did not play. The television remained black, a dusty silhouette in the corner. In its place, the silence grew.

Part V

Deputy Marla Hayes stood beside the patrol vehicle with the warrant in her hand and a rising chill along her spine. The morning sun crested above Graybury’s treetops, turning the dew silver on the grass, but the house at the end of Hickory Lane stood untouched by warmth. Its windows were closed, and the curtains drawn. The garden—visible only in fragments through the slats of the fence—was too still.

The anonymous tip had been brief. A voice distorted through a burner app. “You’re looking in the right place,” it said. “But you’re already late.”

She checked the address again. She would wait five more minutes. Then she would knock.

Behind the house, Braden Powell was already digging.

The soil had changed. It resisted the shovel now. The roots had thickened into ropes beneath the surface, looping in and around the bodies protectively. His arms trembled with every thrust of the blade. The first grave had partially collapsed under the weight of the squash vines, and the bones—what was left of them—had sunk deeper than he remembered burying them.

He had opened three burial sites. None of them would give up what they held.

The garden had stopped being his weeks ago.

He poured gasoline from the red canisters he had dragged out from the shed, sloshing it in uneven arcs over the compost bin, the tomato rows, the perimeter of the eastern plot. The air filled with fumes sharp enough to sting the back of his throat. Still, he moved faster than his body wanted him to, his knees aching, his breath burning from the effort.

He didn’t look up when Meredith stepped out the back door.

She crossed the yard slowly, barefoot, still in the same sweater she had worn the morning before. She stopped at the edge of the main plot and watched him finish pouring the last of the accelerant.

Braden stood there, breathing hard. His hands were stained again. The matchbox in his pocket felt impossibly small.

“I couldn’t get them out,” he said, his voice cracking. “I tried.”

Meredith said nothing at first. Her gaze swept the garden—its unnatural bloom, the twisted symmetry of the vines, the way even the scarecrow looked too human now, slumped beneath the weight of rot. She stepped closer and bent to pick up the trowel where he had dropped it.

“How many?” she asked.

He swallowed hard. “Four.”

She nodded once, holding the trowel. “Did it help?”

Braden met her eyes. “It stopped the worst of it. For a while.”

“And me?” she asked. “Did it help me?”

The silence that followed held everything they had shared since Callum’s name first passed between them. Braden didn’t answer right away. He reached into his pocket and handed her the matchbox.

“I wanted it to,” he said. “I thought if I could do something—something no one else would—I could give you some kind of peace. Even if it cost something. Even if it wasn’t… right.”

Meredith turned the matchbox over in her hand, her thumb tracing the rough strip along the side.

“I stopped watching the tapes,” she said softly.

“I noticed.”

“I didn’t stop for me,” she said. “I stopped for you.”

She struck the match. The flame bloomed with a quiet hiss.

Together, they moved through the garden, lighting the accelerant. The fire caught quickly, rising in orange plumes that shimmered along the paths and curled beneath the trellises. The compost bin collapsed inward with a burst of smoke. Vines recoiled in slow motion, curling back as if wounded. Some burst like waterlogged cords.

Braden stepped toward the center, close to the tallest tomato stakes. His face was flushed from the heat, and his eyes were watering. He looked back once toward Meredith, who stood at the gate with the matchbox in her hand.

Then he stepped forward again, and the fire accepted him.

Whether he meant to walk into it or simply lost his balance, Meredith never told anyone. She stood there long after the flames had climbed into the sky, the black smoke roiling against the blue.

When the fire crew arrived, half the garden had already turned to ash. No one asked where Braden had gone, and the fire yielded no bones. Just collapsed fencing, warped iron stakes, and a patch of soil burned so deeply it would never take seed again.

Part VI

The scorched patch behind the house remained untouched. Even the wild grass had refused to return, as though the soil itself had become an unwilling host. The fencing had collapsed in places, vines long since burned away, their ghostly impressions still visible on the brittle remains of the posts. The space once known throughout Graybury as Braden Powell’s miracle garden now existed only as a ruin—black earth, rusted wire, and silence.

No one came to ask questions anymore.

The fire had been ruled accidental, the source declared unknown. Braden was never found, though the investigators speculated that he had attempted to contain the blaze and succumbed to smoke inhalation. The flames had erased everything that could have been traced—tools, journals, and even the perimeter where the compost pile had once steamed with unnatural heat. By the time the fire crews arrived, there was nothing left to question, and no one was willing to dig deeper.

Meredith Powell lived alone in the house on Hickory Lane. She did not speak to the neighbors, but they brought her casseroles and checked the mail if she forgot. She kept her blinds drawn but left her porch light on. The people of Graybury assumed she was mourning. They assumed a lot of things.

They were not wrong.

She spent her mornings in the side yard, where the soil had not been touched by the fire. There, in the quiet shade beside the house, she had dug a narrow bed of earth. No vegetables. No trellises. Just a simple line of soft blossoms—lavender, snapdragons, and one small cluster of alyssum, planted purposefully at the center.

Callum’s flower.

They had not bloomed for years.

This time, one had.

It stood taller than the rest, pale white petals spreading wide beneath the curve of a faded blue wind chime. Meredith tended it without gloves, brushing the dirt gently with her fingers, never digging more than necessary. She did not speak or sing to it. She simply watched it grow.

On a warm Tuesday in late August, Deputy Marla Hayes knocked on the front door. She held no papers, wore no badge. Her cruiser remained parked discreetly at the end of the drive. Meredith opened the door and stepped onto the porch before she could knock a second time.

“I was nearby,” Marla said.

Meredith nodded. They stood in silence for several seconds, each waiting for the other to make the next move. Marla finally glanced toward the side yard.

“I’ve heard they’re blooming again.”

Meredith looked past her shoulder toward the bed. “Some things grow whether you want them to or not.”

Marla shifted slightly, one hand still resting on the folder she had brought and decided not to open. “I’m not here for that.”

“I know,” Meredith said.

The deputy looked down. “Do you need anything?”

“No,” Meredith replied. “But thank you.”

Marla lingered one moment longer, then turned and walked back to her vehicle. Meredith remained on the porch until the tail lights disappeared around the curve of the road.

That evening, just before the sun disappeared behind the old willows near the property line, Meredith returned to the flower bed with a small tin box. She knelt beside the tallest alyssum, its petals half-closed in the cooling dusk. She opened the box and removed a single sheet of folded paper—a child’s drawing, yellowed at the edges, depicting a stick-figure boy in a garden taller than his head.

She pressed it into the earth with both hands, careful not to damage the roots, then packed the soil gently around it. Her hands trembled only once.

As the last light faded, Meredith sat in silence beside the flower bed on an old wooden stool, listening to the quiet that had taken root around her. The wind chime turned once above her, a soft metallic sigh carried through the branches.