My Great Escape Led Me to You (Emily Blair) novel Chapter 164

Planting tulips in this rural village was something of a novelty; Emily Blair barely had to ask around before she tracked down Arianna George’s tulip fields.

Sprawling across the green expanse, the tulips—still not in full bloom and painted in every possible color—stood out like jewels against the earth.

Emily and Elizabeth Wilson picked their way carefully through the narrow gaps in the field, stopping at the edge of the tulips to take a closer look.

Elizabeth bent down, inspecting the petals. “I can see it. A lot of them have bite marks—looks like mice have been at them.”

Emily nodded. She’d noticed it too.

It wasn’t just the tulips—other crops showed the same telltale signs. Chewed stalks, missing petals, gnawed leaves.

The local farmers had told them they’d tried all sorts of things to get rid of the mice. But each time they managed to wipe out a few, more would show up. It seemed like a never-ending battle.

Trying to catch mice was a massive undertaking. Who could even guess how many nests there were, or where the mice were hiding?

Neither Emily nor Elizabeth knew the first thing about farm work, let alone pest control.

So the two of them could only stand there, staring helplessly at the damaged tulips, both at a loss for where to start.

They pulled out their phones right there in the field, searching for answers online, but came up empty.

Emily thought to herself, no matter how clever they might be, they couldn’t possibly outdo the farmers who’d been working these fields for generations.

Elizabeth tugged on her sleeve. “Standing here isn’t helping. Why don’t we go back and ask my friend? Maybe she’ll have an idea for tomorrow.”

Emily agreed. “Good plan.”

They headed straight back to Ashley Miller’s house, grilling her for any advice she might have.

She flung the bouquet at Emily, who instinctively caught the flowers before they hit the ground.

Looking at Arianna’s furious expression and the tulips with torn petals and wilted leaves, Emily finally understood what she meant.

“I only went to look,” Emily said quickly. “I didn’t touch anything, I swear.”

Anyone would be furious to find their hard-tended flowers destroyed first thing in the morning. The fact that Arianna was still speaking instead of shouting was a testament to her self-restraint.

“I asked around,” Arianna snapped. “Everyone said they only saw you two out there. No one else. So who else could it have been?”

She was clearly at her breaking point, barely holding herself back for the sake of appearances.

Given everything that had happened over the past couple of days, it wasn’t hard for Arianna to connect the dots—she’d rejected Emily’s request, and now her tulips had been vandalized.