Chapter 7 - The Flower Fight Had Been Deliberately Provoked
The argument between Ruby and Evelyn had started ten minutes before Alessio arrived.
Evelyn eventually admitted that too.
Claudia had told her:
“Pick something from Isabella’s bed. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Evelyn chose one of the pale flowers Ruby associated most strongly with her mother.
Ruby saw her.
Told her to put it back.
Evelyn refused.
Ruby grabbed for it.
Evelyn pulled Ruby’s hair.
Ruby pulled hers back.
Two children escalated an argument.
Then Claudia arrived.
But instead of separating them and calming both—
she protected only Evelyn.
Then told Ruby her dead mother’s garden should die.
And slapped her into the pond.
That changed how Alessio understood the confrontation.
Claudia had already spent the previous night digging beneath those beds.
Ruby’s attachment to Isabella’s garden was not merely irritating her.
It threatened the plan.
The flower was bait.
Whether Claudia consciously expected a physical fight could not be proved.
But she had deliberately encouraged her daughter to disturb the exact garden Ruby had been fiercely protecting.
Then used the resulting conflict to humiliate Ruby.
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A seven-year-old grieving her mother had been treated as an enemy because she refused to let adults erase a place they needed destroyed.
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