The Girls in the Garden: A Novel

Content Warning: The source text includes the assault of a minor, the death of a minor, suicide, substance overdose, and depictions of a schizophrenic episode.

Clare vomits from consuming too much alcohol. Her 12-year-old daughter, Pip, tries to help but has not seen Clare this drunk before. Clare apologizes and gets into her bed. A neighbor, Leo, checks on Clare and invites Pip to return to the party in Virginia Park. Pip stays with Clare for almost an hour before going out to look for her sister, Grace. The kids Pip sees in the park—Catkin, Fern, Tyler, and Dylan—say they haven’t seen Grace. Pip also sees a kid named Max, who runs away from her. In the Rose Garden, Pip finds Grace, unconscious, with her body exposed. After fixing Grace’s clothes, Pip runs to Leo’s apartment.

This chapter occurs in the months before the incident in the prologue. It begins with a letter from Pip to her father, Chris, who is in a psychiatric hospital (it is later revealed that he burned down their old house). She describes their apartment, which is one of many that surround a communal park, and she includes drawings of it.