CHAPTER NINETEEN — A DIFFERENT KIND OF WELCOME
The next spring, Mina organized a neighborhood planting day.
She refused to call it a beautification campaign because she said the phrase had been ruined for her.
Instead, she invited people to bring a plant, a shovel, and a story about why they wanted to stay.
Kira arrived with two small fruit trees in the back of Theo’s borrowed truck.
Graham brought gloves and a folding workbench.
Harold Pike brought his terrier, who immediately tried to dig up a row of tulips.
My mother sat beneath the porch awning and directed traffic with her cane.
The broken pear tree had survived the winter.
Its new shoots were thin, but the branches had begun to hold their shape.
I planted one of Kira’s trees beside it.
A family I had never met stopped at the gate.
They had moved into number fourteen the previous weekend.
The father looked at the people working in the yard and hesitated.
“Are we interrupting something?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“We’re planting trees.”
His daughter held a small watering can.
“Can I help?” she asked.
I handed her a pair of gloves.
“Absolutely.”
Across the street, Patricia’s house was quiet.
I did not look toward its windows.
There was work in front of me, and there were people who wanted to do it together.
My mother called from the porch.
“Rowan, the kettle’s boiling.”
I wiped soil from my hands and went inside to make tea.
The blue front door closed softly behind me.
The End.
