The Transformation

The worst part isn't losing yourself. The worst part is that the person you become is happy. Margaret Ashby walked into the garden as a lonely widow and emerged believing she was Elizabeth Crane, a woman who died in 1743 surrounded by seven children and a husband who adored her. Margaret's daughter arrived the next morning and found a stranger in her mother's house who smiled warmly and said, "I'm sorry, dear, do I know you?"

She stepped into the garden because the roses smelled like her grandmother's kitchen. That was the first lie the garden told her — a scent designed to feel like home. By the time she reached the center, the scent had changed: lavender, smoke, sea salt. Memories that weren't hers. She sat down on the stone bench and closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she knew the name of a husband she'd never married and could feel the arthritis in hands that had spent sixty years weaving lace.