The Secret Garden of Martha Grim
By Richard Loez. @ 1992

Page 18

Tommy Hawkins didn't like the man that stayed with Mommy. He was mean, and made him him sit quiet for hours in his room. Tommy wanted his daddy to come back home. He didn't understand why he left, why he was could only see him on weekends, but he knew he didn't like it, and that somehow, that Man had something to do with it. Maybe even cause it. He was ten years old, but he wasn't stupid. Tommy knew a lot more than grown-ups thought he did.

Grown ups never played right with each other, Tommy thought, always yelling and fighting. Why couldn't they play right, he wondered. Now his mommy was playing with the mean man. Tommy didn't like that, he didn't think his daddy liked it either.
That's why Tommy spent most of his day riding his bike away from the house, just so he wouldn't have to be around them. Not like they cared. Sometimes he just rode around the block, sometimes he rode up and down the street. Other times, he would ride down to the Jungle house. Tommy would always stay out in the street, when he came to the Jungle house. No, no..he would never go on the sidewalk there. That was just too close. No one would believe him, but he could hear the plants, the trees, they were breathing. It wasn't his imagination, it wasn't! And now, now after what happened to Sarge the cat, now they had to believe him.
And he would prove it. He could take them there, Rudy could take them all back there.

Somehow he was going to prove that there was something wrong about that woman's garden. And how can she not get old? His Mommy and Daddy got older, how did she stay the same?
He was only ten years old, but he knew one thing, and that was that people don't stay the same. She was wrong, her garden was wrong. Tommy Hawkins was going to prove it. Somehow...

Rudy was talking, but all he could hear was the wind, and the sound of Sarge, dying in the grip of that vine.
Tommy had to make them believe him, he just had to...