Her husband cut down all the roses she had grown for 20 years. He said, ‘Enough wasting your life on nonsense!’ And he cut them down to the root.

The front door opened and her husband Franklin Whitlock stepped outside wearing an old gray shirt while a cigarette hung from his mouth with careless familiarity. His expression was the same one that always appeared before bad news, calm in a way that suggested he believed he had already won.

“You finally made it back,” he said in a relaxed voice that seemed completely disconnected from the destruction around them. “I decided it was time to bring some order to this place.”

Theresa looked around the yard again while her mind struggled to understand what she was seeing.

“Order,” she asked with trembling disbelief, “where are my roses.”

Franklin exhaled a long stream of smoke and dropped the ash onto the bare ground where one of her favorite bushes had bloomed only the day before.

“That is enough with the constant talk about your roses,” he replied with irritation. “This place looks like a cemetery because all you care about are those bushes and the watering hose.”