A Secret in the Garden by Jeneane O'Riley

Here is a summary with spoilers for A Secret in the Garden by Jeneane O'Riley

Eliza Arnold, is a young botanist working at Pinehurst Botanical Gardens. The gardens are struggling financially, and Eliza is desperate to prove her value and keep her position. She learns that Blackwood Manor, a remote estate belonging to reclusive millionaire Jasper Blackwood, owns the gardens and has decided she will visit the elusive manor and ask for his money (basically asking for $250,000) to help save the gardens. Jasper, who also is also rumored to have murdered his parents when he was fifteen. Hester and Darius Blackwood disappeared years earlier, and Jasper was reportedly found near the cliffs covered in Hester’s blood. Their bodies were never recovered, leaving the town convinced that Jasper killed them for their money. Eliza nevertheless drives to Blackwood Manor to ask Jasper for a donation. He refuses to simply give her money but offers an alternative: he will allow her to restore his mother’s abandoned conservatory and will donate the rare plants to Pinehurst, but Eliza must do the restoration alone, live at the manor, and remain there for three months. Desperate to save her job, she accepts.

Blackwood Manor is isolated and dominated by the ruined conservatory, which once belonged to Hester. Eliza begins clearing years of overgrowth and discovers that the garden contains unusually rare plants, including a corpse flower. A rare plant that blooms once every 8 years, and it is getting very close to blooming. She also begins experiencing supernatural activity. She sees a ghostly woman wearing red and decides that the ghost resembles Hester, and the apparition repeatedly appears around the conservatory. The ghost cannot speak directly to Eliza but seems to be trying to communicate with her. The woman’s presence is accompanied by the scent of Chanel No. 5, which was also associated with Hester. The ghost eventually leads Eliza to a buried gold locket. The locket behaves unnaturally and changes what is depicted inside it, eventually becoming a means through which the ghost can communicate. A white dove emerges from the locket, and other supernatural signs begin appearing around the garden. Eliza becomes convinced that the ghost is Hester and that she is trying to tell her what happened before her death.  Basically a sign that Eliza should start investigating now that she is living in the house. A golden spider connected to the locket also leads Eliza to hidden information, including a trunk containing letters supposedly written by Hester. The letters claim that Hester is alive and express love and regret toward Jasper, but their authenticity becomes increasingly questionable. Sowerby, Jasper’s stern butler, repeatedly warns Eliza to stop investigating Hester and Darius, making it clear that he knows more about the family’s history than he is willing to reveal.

While Eliza investigates the manor, her relationship with Jasper changes. He initially treats her as an intruder and expects her to fail at restoring the conservatory, but her persistence and knowledge of plants gradually earn his respect. Jasper is deeply distrustful because of his childhood and the rumors surrounding his parents’ disappearance. He has spent years building the Blackwood business and cultivating an intimidating reputation, partly as a way to protect himself. Eliza sees increasingly contradictory sides of him. He can be threatening and violent toward people he considers dangerous, but he is also protective and unexpectedly gentle with her. At a business dinner, Jasper becomes hostile when a businessman behaves inappropriately toward Eliza, eventually destroying the business relationship rather than allowing the man to continue. He later teaches Eliza to shoot, giving her a sense of independence that contrasts with the control she has experienced from her mother. Eliza’s relationship with her own mother, Loretta, is another major source of conflict. Loretta is controlling and emotionally abusive, constantly questioning Eliza’s decisions and attempting to control where she lives and what she does. At one point during her stay with Jasper, Loretta even sells Eliza’s apartment and moves her out. As Eliza becomes more independent at Blackwood Manor, she begins recognizing how much of her life has been shaped by her mother’s expectations.

The romance between Eliza and Jasper develops slowly as the mystery surrounding Hester becomes more complicated. Jasper becomes increasingly attached to Eliza but is afraid of being vulnerable, while Eliza is attracted to him despite continuing to wonder whether he is capable of murder. Jasper temporarily leaves for New York, partly because of complications surrounding Eliza and partly because his feelings for her have become difficult for him to control. While he is away, he continues communicating with Eliza, and their relationship becomes more intimate. His absence ends when Sowerby tells him that Darius Blackwood, his father, has unexpectedly returned. This is a shock for Eliza as she believed him to be dead. Darius appears unstable and attempts to assert control over the manor, while also behaving as though Hester may still be alive. His arrival causes additional supernatural disturbances and makes Eliza question everything she has learned about the Blackwood family. Darius leaves the house but ends up filing a restraining order so that no one can change anything in the house, that includes Eliza and her project in the gardens. Jasper and Eliza eventually give in to their attraction and have sex, but their relationship remains complicated because the morning after they slept with each other Eliza wonders if she just slept with a murderer. Jasper nevertheless begins making deliberate efforts to give Eliza choices rather than take them away from her. He plans a date night for them the next night where he gives her a rare orchid and then plans for the two of them to paint, something that she has truly wanted to do rather than listen to what her mom wanted her to do. 

Eliza continues investigating the disappearance and discovers evidence that appears to support the old accusations against Jasper. She finds police records concerning Hester’s blood on Jasper’s clothing and learns more about what happened when Jasper was fifteen. Jasper explains that his parents did not simply disappear without explanation. Hester’s blood was on him because she had suffered a nosebleed while embracing him before leaving. Jasper was then abandoned, and Sowerby became the person who remained with him. The letters supposedly written by Hester continue to create confusion because they suggest she was alive long after her disappearance. Eliza eventually discovers that the locket is reacting to the conservatory and to something buried beneath it. When the corpse flower blooms, the locket leads her toward a specific location in the garden. Eliza digs and discovers human remains, including a hand. The discovery causes the entire mystery to collapse back onto Jasper. Sowerby tells Eliza to call the cops, which she does. Jasper is arrested because the remains appear to confirm that Hester was murdered and buried on the property. Eliza is horrified because she has begun to love Jasper but now has physical evidence that seems to prove he may have been responsible for his mother’s death.

After returning to live with her mom, Eliza is miserable. Meanwile Jasper is cleared, and is able to return back to his manor. The cops call Elliza back in to help restore some of the plants, though when she gets to the manor she is devastated to find that all of her hard work is gone thanks to the investigation and them having to dig that body up. The truth is eventually revealed by Darius. Hester was not murdered by Jasper. She had been suffering from a serious medical condition and died after developing sulfhemoglobinemia, a rare condition that caused her blood to turn green and ultimately caused her death. Before she died, Hester wanted to be buried in her beloved garden. Darius buried her body in the conservatory according to her wishes, but instead of telling Jasper the truth, he broke down psychologically and abandoned his son. He also forged letters from Hester, allowing Jasper to believe for years that his parents were still alive somewhere and had chosen to leave him. Sowerby knew what had happened but kept silent because he believed revealing the truth would destroy Jasper. Jasper therefore spent most of his life believing that his parents had abandoned him and living under the suspicion that he had murdered them. The ghost haunting the manor is Hester, and her purpose is not to punish Jasper but to lead Eliza toward the truth so that her son can finally understand that she loved him and did not willingly abandon him.

After the truth comes out, Darius’s guilt and grief nearly lead him to suicide, but Jasper intervenes and prevents him from killing himself. Rather than respond with revenge, Jasper chooses to help his father, demonstrating how much he has changed from the isolated and distrustful man Eliza first encountered. Hester’s ghost also appears and helps bring the confrontation to an end. With the truth exposed, Hester is finally able to move on. Her ghost appears peacefully before disappearing, leaving Jasper with the knowledge that his mother loved him and that her death was not his fault. Eliza also breaks further away from her mother’s control and begins pursuing her own interests, including painting. Jasper supports her and decides to help secure the future of Pinehurst Botanical Gardens. The restored relationship between Eliza and Jasper becomes a committed romance, and Jasper eventually proposes to her in the garden. Hester’s remains are given a proper resting place, and the locket is buried with a seed. A new plant grows from it with heart-shaped petals and the scent of Hester’s Chanel No. 5, serving as the final supernatural indication that Hester’s story has been put to rest.