Chapter 48
Forty-Eight
The thing about gardens is they need someone to tend them.
Coming down the path, you decide to visit his cottage first. His cottage had a garden; yours never got that far. Maybe yours never will, now. Maybe that’s okay.
You expect his will be an overgrown catastrophe.
His tomatoes were in a state when you met, and that was when he was there to tend them; how unruly they must be now, and how bare the alfalfa patch must be, with no one to stop Petunia’s pilfering.
And the house—both houses have been abandoned for a year. Who knows what waits for you now?
Except the garden is well-kept.
“Someone had to make sure this place didn’t fall apart,” says Red. “Does Cyrus know he’s got a gopher problem? Wait, Hans, why are you crying?”