I always knew Margaret hated me. Not that she’d ever come out and say it. She’s far too refined, far too polite for anything so gauche. No, Margaret’s hatred is subtle, like a bitter note buried in a sweet dessert. It seeps out in icy glances and carefully chosen words, in the way she never says my name with any warmth. Five years into my marriage to her son, James, I can still hear the warning bell that sounded in my head when we first met.
“Landscape architecture,” she’d said slowly, the first time James introduced me, her lips barely curving into a smile. “How… creative. But is it stable enough for a family, Alice?” She pronounced my name as though it were something unpleasant she’d accidentally stepped in, and since then, I’d grown used to the feeling of being the messy stain in her pristine life.
I made it my mission to avoid her as much as possible, but James would still drag me over to the Manor every month, assuring me she’d “warm up to me eventually.” He never understood how those visits drained me and left me brittle and bitter, my temper flaring at him the whole way home.
James… I love him. I do. He’s good and kind, with a strange mixture of charm and obliviousness that makes him almost endearing. But I’ve never understood how he can be so blind to his mother’s digs, to her toxic influence. When we fight—and lately, we fight often—it’s always about her. Always about his refusal to see her for what she really is, to admit the damage she’s causing us. He insists I’m overreacting, but that’s easy to say when you’re not the one being slowly chipped away.
The tension is always thickest in Margaret’s garden, a sprawling, manicured wonder she prunes with the precision of a surgeon. The garden is infamous in the area, featured in local magazines, all laurels of praise to Margaret’s skill. I’m a professional landscaper, yet Margaret has made it clear she doesn’t want my “amateurish touch” anywhere near it.
“This garden’s always been my sanctuary, Alice. It’s where I go to escape,” she’d said pointedly, her gaze sweeping over me with disdain, as if I were a weed that dared intrude on her Eden.
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Each visit, I’d silently seethe as she’d offer James a drink, casually throwing in questions about my work and his “worries about stability.” It was always James, and she’d pretend I was invisible. I’d clench my teeth, ignore the tightening knot in my chest, and bite my tongue, telling myself that I could endure it—for James.
Until the night I couldn’t.
It was a dinner party, one of those Manor affairs where Margaret paraded her high society friends around, ensuring everyone understood the legacy. James and I had arrived late, and Margaret had made a show of “forgiving us” with an exaggerated hug for her son and a half-hearted wave in my direction. I should’ve known right then it would be bad.
As the evening wore on, Margaret took every chance to publicly dissect my career. “Tell me, Alice,” she’d said, voice dripping with faux curiosity, “are you still working on those little… hobby gardens?” Laughter bubbled around us. “I suppose it must be fulfilling in its own way, if you like that sort of thing.”
The old me would have let it slide, would have forced myself to smile and swallow my pride. But that night, something snapped. I wasn’t going to be polite anymore.
“Maybe not all of us need grand gestures to feel fulfilled, Margaret,” I replied, and in the sharp intake of breath from the crowd, I could feel every eye on us. “Some of us just appreciate beauty for its own sake, not just for show.”
I saw her mouth tighten, the fury flash in her eyes, but she held her composure. Barely.
“You’ve always been very… simplistic, Alice,” she said with that same plastic smile, voice a low, lethal whisper. But her mask had cracked. She wanted me gone, and tonight she didn’t care who saw it.
On the drive home, James was silent. No words of comfort, no defense for me against his mother’s attacks. Finally, I asked, “Did you hear what she said to me, James? Did you hear a word of it?”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I just don’t know why you couldn’t… let it go, Alice. Why do you always have to make it a battle?”
The silence in the car was suffocating, and by the time we reached home, I could barely look at him. We slept in separate rooms that night, a cold divide I knew was Margaret’s making. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, feeling like the life I’d built with James was cracking, splitting under the weight of her disapproval.
A few days later, I returned to the Manor. I told myself I needed to see the garden one last time, to understand the obsession that Margaret had used to strangle my marriage. I found myself in her prized rose garden, my fingers trailing over the petals of the hybrid roses she was so proud of, their scent intoxicating.
That’s when I felt her presence behind me.
“What are you doing here, Alice?” Her voice was low and cold, the usual veneer of politeness stripped away.
“I needed to see what’s so special about this garden that you’d destroy everything to protect it,” I replied.
She took a step closer, and for the first time, I saw her unfiltered hatred. “You think you can just walk into my family, into my son’s life, and claim it as your own?” She spat the words like venom. “You’ll never be good enough. Not for him. Not for this family.”
I looked her dead in the eye, feeling a strange, calm clarity wash over me. “The only person who’s destroying this family is you, Margaret. And if James can’t see that… maybe he never will.”
She flinched, a tiny movement, but enough to betray her shock. I’d stood up to her. For the first time in our twisted dance, I was in control, even if it meant walking away.
In the days that followed, I told James everything: the constant digs, the whispered threats, the way his mother had tried to erase me. He listened, and for once, he seemed to understand. But as the weeks wore on, I saw him wrestle with his loyalty, torn between me and the woman who had shaped his world.
And in the end, he couldn’t choose.
I left our home that day, vowing to never return. I took nothing but my pride and the hope that somewhere, somehow, I could rebuild myself from the pieces Margaret had tried to shatter.
The roses, I imagined, still bloomed in her garden, a monument to the woman who’d lost herself to bitterness and control. And as for me—I’d be free, and nothing, NOTHING could beat that.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This story is intended for entertainment purposes only, and any opinions or views expressed by characters do not reflect those of the author.
