Missing Butterfly
by Luntu Sipuka

The garden was silent, except for the rhythmic sound of the shears.

Thando didn't mind the silence; in fact, he craved it. After the noise of the city, the constant demands of the office, and the suffocating expectations of his family, the plants were easy.

They didn't talk back. They didn't ask for things he couldn't give.

He moved from the jasmine to the rosebushes, his hands steady and practiced. Gardening was the only thing that felt real anymore. Everything else—the board meetings, the property developments, the society weddings—felt like a play he was forced to perform in.

But then he saw her. A flash of color near the old oak tree.

A woman he didn't recognize, looking at his roses with an intensity that made him stop mid-clip. She wasn't one of the guests from his mother's charity luncheon. She wasn't dressed for a party.

She wore a simple blue dress that seemed to catch the light, and her hair was pulled back in a way that exposed the sharp line of her jaw.

She didn't see him. She was leaning down, her fingers hovering just inches from a prize-winning Hybrid Tea.

"Beautiful, isn't she?" he said, surprised by his own voice.

She jumped, her hand recoiling as if she'd been burned. She turned to face him, and for a moment, Thando forgot how to breathe.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't think anyone was here."

"It's my garden," he said, stepping out from the shadows of the trellis. "You're welcome to be here. But the roses prefer it if you don't scare them."

A small smile touched her lips, and Thando felt a shift in the air. Something he hadn't felt in a very long time.