Under the Hydrangea Bush

Beneath the blooms of a suburban garden, memory stirs.

Newly divorced, Rose returns to her childhood home with her two young daughters, hoping for a summer of comfort and familiarity. But the rituals that once defined her parents' house-the hiss of sprinklers, the clatter of full English breakfasts, the rhythmic stripes of a freshly mown lawn-carry with them shadows Rose has long avoided.

As she tends to the garden, Rose drifts back to a summer when she was a girl-when an overheard conversation left her uneasy, when someone she trusted crossed a line so subtle it almost vanished, except for the way it made her skin prickle. She tried to tell her mother once, but the words were swallowed, shushed, and forgotten. Or so everyone believed.

Now, kneeling before the hydrangea bush that once hid her, Rose unearths the truth she buried there-and confronts the silence that has passed through generations. With her daughters playing in the fading light, she faces a choice: continue the family's quiet endurance or break the cycle once and for all.

Under the Hydrangea Bush is a haunting, lyrical novel about memory, silence, and the courage to speak when the past still blooms in the present.