Chapter Ten
Sundays at the compound looked different from the rest of the week.
Meredith noticed it from the moment she stepped out of her cabin—the shift in energy, the softer edges.
Families had arrived overnight, filling the spaces between the hard men and harder business with something that felt almost normal.
Kids ran between buildings, shrieking with the particular joy of children given room to be loud.
Women gathered on the lodge porch, coffee cups in hand, watching their men with expressions that mixed affection with exasperation.
The garden she'd planted was already showing green against the gravel.
Five days of work, and the compound had transformed.
Herb beds lined the lodge foundation, fragrant in the morning sun.
Tomato plants stood staked and proud near the dock.
The ornamental grasses she'd salvaged swayed in the breeze off the water.
Even the prospects had started checking the plants without being told—watering, weeding, treating the garden like it mattered.
Because it did. Because everything that grew mattered.
Meredith grabbed her trowel and headed for the dock garden, already planning the day's work.
She'd found a flat of marigolds behind the garage yesterday—someone had bought them and forgotten them, and they were leggy but alive.
Transplanting them along the walkway would add color and keep pests away from the vegetables.
She was halfway through the first row when a shadow fell across her work.
"What are you doing?"
The voice was small, curious, belonging to a girl maybe seven years old with dark braids and her father's stubborn jaw. One of the brothers' daughters—Meredith had seen her running with the other kids, but they hadn't spoken.
"Planting marigolds." Meredith sat back on her heels. "You want to help?"
The girl's eyes went wide. "Really?"
"Really." Meredith patted the dirt beside her. "Come on. I'll show you."
The girl dropped to her knees with enthusiasm that sent soil scattering. Meredith bit back a smile and handed her a seedling.
"First, you dig a hole. Not too deep—just big enough for the roots to spread out." She demonstrated, scooping soil with her trowel. "Then you take the plant out of the pot. Gently. You don't want to hurt the roots."
"Like this?" The girl squeezed the plastic pot, and the marigold popped free with a shower of dirt.
"Perfect. Now put it in the hole and push the soil back around it. Pack it down a little so it stays upright."
Small hands patted the soil with intense concentration. When the marigold stood on its own, the girl sat back with a grin that could have powered the compound's lights.
"I did it!"
"You did." Meredith handed her the watering can. "Now give it a drink. Not too much—you don't want to drown it."
The girl watered with the seriousness of someone performing surgery. When she finished, she looked up at Meredith with eyes full of questions.
"Will it grow big?"
"If you take care of it." Meredith touched the bright yellow petals. "Plants are like people that way. They need attention. Water. Sunlight. Someone checking on them to make sure they're okay."
"Can I check on it?"
"Every day, if you want. That's your marigold now. You planted it."
The girl scrambled to her feet and ran toward the lodge, shouting something about showing her mother. Meredith watched her go, something warm spreading through her chest.
Her grandmother had done the same thing, once. Put a trowel in a six-year-old's hands and changed her life forever.
Maybe the cycle continued.
The girl came back four more times that morning.
"It's still there!" she announced on her first return, as if the marigold might have wandered off.
"Still there," Meredith confirmed. "And it will be there tomorrow too."
The second visit included a detailed report on the plant's exact color, the number of petals, and the bug she'd seen crawling on a leaf. The third visit involved a drawing—yellow flower, green stem, brown dirt, all rendered in enthusiastic crayon.
By the fourth visit, Meredith had taught her to check the soil moisture and identify when a plant needed water.
"She's checked on that flower six times today."
Meredith looked up. Tessa stood at the garden's edge, the tall woman's mouth curved in amusement.
"Seven, actually." Meredith wiped her hands on her jeans. "She's thorough."
"She's obsessed. Her mama's going to have to plant a whole garden at their house now." Tessa crossed her arms, watching the girl kneel beside her marigold for inspection number eight. "You're good with kids."
"I was that kid once. My grandmother gave me my first plant when I was about her age." Meredith smiled at the memory. "It was a tomato seedling. I watered it so much I nearly drowned it. Grandma Ruth had to teach me that too much love could kill as easily as too little."
"Smart woman."
"The smartest."
They stood in comfortable silence, watching the girl and her marigold. Around them, the compound hummed with Sunday energy—kids playing, families eating, brothers doing the kind of slow maintenance that didn't need to be rushed.
Normal. It felt almost normal.
"Quarry's been looking for you," Tessa said.
Meredith's heart kicked. "He knows where I am."
"He knows where you are all the time. Doesn't mean he won't look." Tessa's eyes glinted with something knowing. "Man's got it bad."
"We're not—"
"Didn't say you were. Said he's got it bad." She pushed off from the fence. "What you do about that is your business. Just thought you should know the view from outside."
She walked away before Meredith could respond, leaving behind the observation like a grenade with the pin pulled.
Man's got it bad.
She already knew that. Had known it since the ridge cabin, maybe since the moment he'd walked across her ruined nursery and grabbed a rope to help her haul a dead tree.
Quarry didn't hide what he felt—he just moved with the slow, heavy patience of a man who understood that pressure worked better than force.
But knowing and acknowledging were different things. Knowing was safe. Acknowledging meant deciding what to do about it.
She turned back to her marigolds and tried not to think about the answer.
He appeared at the garden fence an hour later.
Meredith saw him from the corner of her eye—leaning against the wooden posts, arms crossed, watching her work without interrupting. He'd been there for at least five minutes before she acknowledged him, long enough that another man might have said something.
Quarry just waited.
"You could help instead of supervising," she said without looking up.
"Didn't want to interrupt."
"You're not interrupting." She gestured at the empty space beside her. "There's room."
He hesitated. Just for a moment, just a flicker of uncertainty that seemed strange on a man who faced down armed crews without flinching. Then he pushed off the fence and walked through the garden gate.
"What do you need?"
Meredith handed him a trowel. "Rosemary. Along the back fence. Dig the holes about eight inches deep—the roots need room to spread."
He took the trowel and moved to the back of the garden with the same deliberate pace she'd watched all week. She tried to focus on her own work—the marigolds still needed finishing—but her eyes kept drifting.
He knelt in the dirt like he belonged there. The trowel looked small in his hands, almost delicate, but he handled it with surprising care. Each hole was precisely the right depth. Each rosemary plant was placed with attention to root spread, soil contact, proper spacing.
"You've been practicing," she said.
"Watching." He set another plant in place. "You make it look easy."
"It is easy. People just don't take the time to learn." She finished her row and moved to kneel beside him. "Here. You're packing the soil too tight. Roots need room to breathe."
She reached over and adjusted his hands, showing him the right pressure. His skin was warm under her fingers, rough with calluses that had nothing to do with gardening.
"Like this?"
"Better." She didn't pull her hands away. "You're a quick study."
"You said that before."
"It's still true."
They worked side by side, their shoulders brushing, the Sunday sounds of the compound fading into background noise. The rosemary went in row by row, fragrant and green, and Meredith found herself relaxing in a way she hadn't since before Hardt's men destroyed her greenhouse.
This was what she'd been missing. Not just the plants—though she'd missed those desperately—but the partnership. Having someone beside her in the dirt, learning what she loved, treating it like it mattered.
"Why did you start?" Quarry asked.
"Start what?"
"Growing things. The nursery, the gardens. All of it."
Meredith sat back and considered the question. Nobody had asked her that in years. Most people assumed it was the obvious answer—family business, inherited land, nowhere else to go.
"My grandmother," she said finally. "The day after my parents' funeral, she took me to the garden and put a seed in my hand.
I was six years old. Didn't understand death, didn't understand why they weren't coming back, didn't understand anything except that the world had broken and nobody could fix it. "
Quarry went still, listening.
"She told me to plant the seed. Said that growing things was how you learned to live with loss.
You put something in the ground, and you take care of it, and you watch it become something new.
" Meredith touched a rosemary leaf, released its scent into the air.
"She was right. By the time that first tomato plant fruited, I understood.
Not all of it—I was six—but enough. Enough to know that life kept going, and I could be part of making it grow. "
"And that's why you stayed. Even when Hardt came after you."
"That land is where I learned to live again. I'm not letting anyone bury it under concrete."
Quarry was quiet for a long moment. Then he picked up his trowel and went back to work.
"I spent twelve years breaking things," he said. "Crushing rock. Demolition. Taking something whole and turning it into pieces small enough to haul away." His hands moved through the soil with practiced care. "Never thought about what it felt like to do the opposite."
"And now?"
He looked at her. The afternoon light caught his eyes, turning them warm.
"Now I think I understand why you fought so hard to keep it."
The words settled over her like sunlight. She watched him plant the last rosemary—careful, precise, patient—and felt something shift in her chest.
This man who'd spent his life breaking things. Who'd given his body to a company that threw him away. Who'd come to her ruined nursery and grabbed a rope without being asked.
He was learning what it felt like to make something grow.
She saw it in the way he handled the plants. The same hands that had crushed Vince Taber's throat now cradled seedlings like they were precious. The same strength that demolished buildings was being channeled into careful cultivation.
"You're doing it wrong," she said softly.
He looked up, surprised. "What?"
"The last one. Too deep." She moved closer, kneeling beside him, her hand covering his on the trowel. "Let me show you."
She guided his hands, adjusting the depth, demonstrating the right pressure. He followed her lead without resistance, learning through her touch what words couldn't teach.
The rosemary went in perfectly.
"Better," she said, but she didn't move away.
They knelt there in the afternoon light, her hand still on his, surrounded by plants they'd put in the ground together. The compound murmured around them—kids playing, families laughing, the gentle chaos of people living.
And Meredith watched a man who breaks things learn what it felt like to make something grow.