Page 16 of Where You're Planted

And yet, how long could she justify raising Briar in a house that lacked basic necessities? Only her bedroom and bathroom had been finished before the work stopped. In lieu of a new HVAC system, she ran a measly space heater. Instead of real kitchen appliances, she cooked on a hot plate and ina microwave balanced on top of plastic bins filled with other people’s cast-offs. She didn’t know when she’d ever get her head above water long enough to change any of it.

They brushed their teeth, pulled on thrifted pajamas, and settled onto the queen-size air mattress that would slowly deflate through the night until it was more like a hammock than a bed.

Briar nestled her cheek against Tansy’s pillow, scooting into her side. “Disaster check?” she asked on a yawn.

Tansy had hoped the visit with Charlie might disrupt this particular bedtime ritual. Ignoring the pang in her heart, she reached for her phone. “Let’s see. Clear skies, low fifties. Pretty good weather night.”

“Hurricane?”

“Out of season.”

“Tornado?” Briar murmured, nestling down.

“No watches or warnings. Light winds from the southeast.”

“Flash flood?”

“Low precipitation.”

“Blizzard?”

“Same. And too warm.”

Briar closed her eyes. “So no ice fog either.”

“Also, we don’t live in Alaska,” Tansy pointed out.

“Earthquake?”

“We don’t get earthquakes here,” Tansy said, just like she had a hundred times. None of this was news to Briar. She just wanted to hear that the answers were still the same.

“Mudslide?”

“You’re reaching,” Tansy said, smoothing back Briar’s hair and kissing her temple.

“You’ll wake me up if there’s a warning?” Briar asked sleepily.

“Of course. You don’t have to worry about it.”

Within a couple minutes, Briar was breathing heavily. Tonight more than ever, Tansy relished those little sighs against her skin. Still, she had to get Briar’s room finished so they weren’t literally sleeping on top of each other.

She used to spend these precious nighttime hours between Briar’s bedtime and her own winding down with a book, but lately, she scrolled mindlessly on her phone in the darkness until her eyes stung, feeling vaguely trapped in the bed, even though Briar slept soundly enough for her to slip away. That separation was hard to initiate most nights and impossible tonight. So she put in earbuds and watched videos about animals being rescued and book-binding tutorials and exotic travel montages filmed by twenty-somethings with disposable income.

She swiped on a video that made her bolt upright, jostling the bed like a boat on waves. It wasJack, carrying fence posts over one shoulder, hoisting a big bag of soil onto a table, and chopping a massive tree trunk into smaller pieces with an axe. There were close-ups, too, the camera zooming in on his Adam’s apple as he guzzled water, sweat glistening on his forearms while he turned a screwdriver, gloves shoved into his back pocket that flapped as he walked across the main lawn at the gardens. Now he was talking to Ian, both of them crouched, digging into an empty bed of dirt, and suddenly, Jack scowled back at the camera, which panned abruptly to the ground. The caption said simplyPlant Daddy, part 8with a drooly face emoji.

The comments were similar.

I need this man to handle me like that bag of soil.

Never been so interested in gardening in my life.

I just want to be a glove in Plant Daddy’s back pocket. Is that too much to ask???

Tansy shook her head in the darkness. Something was wrong with her algorithm if this was the content it was funneling to her.

When it looped back to the beginning, though, she didn’t click away.

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