Katherine Nicolai

He pressed them to his face and took a deep breath in and let it out in a contented sigh.

We chatted for a few minutes about some of our favorite spots.

He told me about a place by the highway, and I told him about a tree behind the library.

He lifted the bouquet to thank me, and I carried my basket out to divvy up the rest of my plunder among friends and strangers on my way back home.

One day, you're young, driving through the countryside, surreptitiously swiping stems of lilacs from overgrown shrubs on abandoned farms without a care in the world.

And the next day, you're a bit older.

You've bought one of those abandoned farms yourself.

And you're growing enough lilacs for the whole county, still without a care in the world.

I have been a lilac devotee since I was a teenager.

first swept up in the romance of how beautiful and sweetly scented and short-lived these flowers are.

And each spring, I found myself venturing out, discreetly but determinedly,

to scavenge enough stems to fill a few vases.

Along the way, I'd not only found some very good spots to snip where no one would miss them.

I'd met a few other lilac thieves, and we'd shared our intel.

Then, one May day, I'd been out on a caper at an old farmhouse that had been long ago abandoned.

I'd just returned to my car on the dirt road beside the driveway.

and was about to tuck a full basket of lilacs and my pruning shears into the trunk when another car pulled up beside me.

The jig was up.

I'd been caught, not red-handed, but sort of green-thumbed, I thought.

I tucked the basket and the shears childishly behind my back and said, Engine got overheated.