The Petals of Amaryllis

Chapter 1

As much as I loved Freddie and cherished him, I knew the red flags were there.

I knew they existed, but I felt like we could overcome them, and I could fix him.

Now I know that rose-tinted glasses make all red flags just seem like flags.

Love is dumb. It makes you do stupid things and believe in lies, but if you haven't found that special person who doesn't lie and cheat, don't give up. There is someone out there for you whether you believe it or not.

I seemed to be a magnet to the broken ones. Probably because I convinced myself I could fix every person thrown at me. Freddie just so happened to catch me in his game.

I guess I was entranced by how romantic he could be, but now I realize it was bait to yank me into a false reality. He made me feel like I owed him a debt after he pulled me from a broken home.

I was naive, I admit it. But I didn't know any better.

What he gave me was so real that after a while, I felt as though nothing would change. I would marry this man. I would love him. I would devote my life to him. He was all I knew.

I was so helplessly in love, I just brushed aside everything he ever did.

Before he really fell into his reign of terror, he humored me and my hobbies.

My favorite thing to do in the whole world was garden. It reminded me of when I was little when I'd sit on the porch of my childhood home, watching my mother pull plants from pots, unbind the roots, dig a hole, and plant the delicate flower.

There were always plants littered throughout the house and ivy that climbed the stare case. Every windowsill had succulents or herbs growing from terracotta pots. Each day my mom would get up early and water all her plants making sure every one got a little bit of love.

It was her one sense of control in our house.

When I moved away with Freddie at 22 after my father left, the big beautiful gardens and the extravagant indoor plants had been thriving like never before.

Good for the plants, bad for my mother.

Once me and Freddie had settled in to our home the first thing we did was buy a plant. A big dark red amaryllis. I had to wait most of the year before it bloomed and by the time it did there were many other plants sitting next to it.

Freddie always seemed to play into my love for plants. Every apology was a plant and never the words that should have been said.

I remember waking up one winter morning and seeing the bloom basking in the limited sunlight. In the moment I saw it, I felt like nothing could break that beautiful flower because it stood tall and strong.

But, I was wrong.

That night was when the flower broke, as did Freddie.

He got a little too drunk and I got a little too angry so I pushed him and in his stupor he stumbled back and landed right on the amaryllis, sealing its fate.

I watched as it snapped with a painful crack, and the large blood red flower fell to the floor.

It didn't bloom again.

Since that day Freddie turned into someone else. He had lost every bit of sweet love he once had to offer.

But I couldn't leave someone who saved me. He didn't have to, yet he did. He used my terrible home life against me to get what he wanted. He seemed to think that I could never refuse a plant, and for some ungodly reason, I couldn't, even though he was beginning to stain the reason I loved them so much.

I can still remember the moment when I went back to our house to collect my things and saw all of my beautiful flowers had wilted and died.

Symbolism is a funny thing. That's what cemented his death, or rather, his murder.