Chapter 11: The Missing Sixth Line
The collection’s sixth line remained missing, and Priya refused to invent a happy explanation.
On Monday she gathered the neighbors around Bernard’s empty garden bed with a notebook full of observations.
“We’ve found five promising survivors,” she said.
“That is worth celebrating, but it isn’t the complete collection June described.”
Bernard leaned against his shovel.
“Maybe it’s gone for good.”
“Maybe,” Priya admitted.
“If it is, we should be honest about that.”
Diane studied the ceramic marker stamped with the number six.
“June called that line Ember,” she said.
“It bloomed later than the others and had shorter leaves.”
Lucia looked at her notes.
“Could someone have moved it?”
“I once brought a cutting to the library courtyard,” Diane replied.
“The library rebuilt the courtyard years ago.
”
Mark suggested asking whether the gardeners who maintained that property remembered the plant.
They drove to the library after lunch and found a new concrete seating area where the old flower border had been.
The head librarian, Rosa Bennett, remembered a summer when volunteers had relocated perennial plants before construction.
“We gave some away at the neighborhood plant exchange,” she said.
“A woman from the retirement complex took several pots.”
“Do you remember her name?” Lucia asked.
Rosa shook her head.
“But I remember she wore a hat covered in tiny fabric cherries.”
The description made Diane laugh.
“That sounds like Mae Holloway.”
Mae lived at the retirement complex on the other side of town.
She opened her apartment door in a cherry-patterned hat and regarded Diane with unmistakable suspicion.
“You haven’t visited in eight years,” Mae said.
“You haven’t called in seven,” Diane replied.
“I didn’t call because you stopped answering.”
“Then we’re both extremely consistent.”
Mae examined the photograph Lucia held out.
“I used to grow that,” she said.
“I gave the last pot to my grandson when I moved upstairs.”
“Where is he now?”
“Running a little restaurant out near the highway.”
The grandson’s restaurant stood beside a gas station and served enormous sandwiches on homemade bread.
He remembered the plant because his grandmother had warned him that it was more stubborn than he was.
“I put it out behind the kitchen,” he said.
“The cooks kept trimming it because it blocked the trash bins.”
Mark tried not to laugh.
“Does it still grow there?”
“You’ll have to look.”
Behind the restaurant, an untidy red-flowering plant leaned against a chain-link fence.
The leaves were narrow, and a few short flower spikes appeared near the top.
Priya knelt beside it, careful not to touch the stems until the owner gave permission.
“It resembles the description,” she said.
“We need further examination before deciding what it is.”
The grandson shrugged.
“If it’s important, you can take a cutting.”
Diane crouched slowly, studying the plant without reaching for it.
“June used to say Ember was the one that survived being forgotten,” she whispered.
“She would have laughed to see it behind a sandwich shop.”
Priya obtained permission to document the plant and take a small cutting for evaluation.
Mark helped place it in a labeled container, and Lucia wrote the location and date in her notebook.
They were still smiling when an unfamiliar car pulled into the restaurant parking lot.
Mallory Chen stepped out wearing work boots and carrying a cardboard tray of seedlings.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said.
“I heard you were tracing the collection through the old neighborhood.”
Diane straightened with difficulty.
“How did you find us?”
“Mae Holloway called the garden center after a reporter asked about rare red flowers.”
Mallory looked apologetic.
“I asked the librarian whether she could pass along my number, but she said you had already left.”
Mark noticed that Mallory had brought no camera crew and no branded signs.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I want to see the plants June worked on, and I want to understand the history accurately.”
“Is that a company request?” Priya asked.
“It’s a scientist’s request.”
Mallory set the tray on a nearby picnic table.
“I brought the parent lines we can publicly identify from our own records.”
“You shouldn’t have to trust my memory of a presentation.”
Priya examined the labels.
The tray offered a starting point for comparing traits and documented origins, not an instant answer to every question.
Mallory explained that the modern commercial variety had undergone additional selection work, and that Crownleaf was reviewing the way it described the contribution of the historic material.
“I can’t reverse every decision my employer made,” she said.
“But I can insist on an accurate account of my own research.”
Diane looked from Mallory to the plant behind the fence.
“Then let’s begin with the things we can actually see.”
For the next hour, the three women compared observations while Mark and Lucia recorded their comments.
The sun had moved behind the restaurant roof when they finished.
Priya was still unwilling to declare the sixth line recovered.
She did, however, circle the word POSSIBLE in her notebook and write it in capital letters.
Mark thought that was an honest kind of victory.
