Cherry Wren's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

The seedlings were in the ground, but Cherry didn't know what came next. She stood at her kitchen window the next morning, staring at the small wooden box and the glass bottle perched on its edge. The pink ribbon caught the light. She had watched three videos about tomato pruning and felt dumber after each one. She needed someone real. Someone who had done this for years, not a stranger behind a screen. She drove out past the edge of town, where the houses thinned and the fences turned into split rails. She had no plan. She just drove until she saw a place that looked like the picture in her head. A wraparound porch. Fruit trees. Hanging baskets on every hook. A garden out front that didn't look planted so much as grown into the dirt over decades. Cherry parked on the shoulder and stared. The garden alone made her chest hurt. Tomatoes climbed a real trellis. Marigolds tangled between the rows. Pumpkins sat fat among the leaves. Whoever lived there knew exactly where every plant should go. Her little box back home was a guess. This was knowledge. She sat in her car for a long time. Then she got out and walked to the gate. An older woman was kneeling by the pumpkins, hands brown with dirt. She looked up and waited, not surprised, not impatient. Cherry's throat went tight. "I don't know what I'm doing," Cherry said. "I planted a garden. It's tiny. I have a canning class Saturday and no one to ask anything." Her voice cracked. "Could I learn from you? I'd work. I'd weed. Anything." The woman wiped her hands on her jeans and stood. She looked Cherry over once, slow. Then she opened the gate. "Come back Saturday after your class," she said. "Bring whatever you put up. We'll start there." Cherry nodded and didn't trust herself to speak. She drove home with her hands shaking on the wheel. The bottle on the garden box caught the afternoon sun. For the first time, she had someone to bring the skills home to.