Katherine Nicolai

You see, I am a lilac thief.

I don't strike at random.

My crimes aren't ham-fisted or even much noticed.

I'm a subtle thief.

I plan when and where, and make my getaway before anyone is the wiser.

When I walk my neighborhood, I might casually reach up for a stray blossom creeping through the slats of a fence, and just as casually tuck it into the flag of a mailbox for someone to find later.

But I knew better than to pull a real heist so close to home.

For that, I packed a kit into my car.

Wicker basket, garden gloves, twine, and a small set of pruning shears.

I dressed inconspicuously and drove out into the countryside.

there was an old farmhouse, long abandoned on a dirt road that I knew well.

I'd cased the joint years ago and found the house reliably empty and the yard reliably full of lilac trees.

I parked my car on the edge of the road to give myself a bit of plausible deniability.

After all, perhaps I'd just had a spot of car trouble and was letting an overheated engine cool down and had stopped to smell the roses, as it were.

I chuckled to myself as I took my kit from the back seat, master criminal that I was, and made my way down the long and dusty drive that led to the old house.

I stood with the sun on my face for a few moments and let my imagination spin a story about who might have lived here.

I thought of kids running through the vegetable patch, a pack of family dogs racing with them, sparklers on the 4th of July,

a kitchen with rows of freshly canned pickles laid out on cotton towels, a tree planted to mark a special day a hundred years ago that grew to the one I looked at now.

It had a large wraparound porch, and though the stairs had a few missing boards and the paint was chipped and faded,

I could tell it had been a beloved place in its time.