Cherry Wren's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

Cherry woke Sunday still thinking about the eleven baskets. She made coffee and carried it outside to check her own small bed. The cedar box sat against the fence, herbs filling out in neat rows, a few cherry blossoms catching the early light. It looked small next to what she had seen yesterday. It also looked like hers. A voice called over the fence before she finished her coffee. Her neighbor stood on the property line, arms folded. He asked how long that thing had been there. He said he'd pulled his copy of the lease last night. No alterations to the yard. No permanent structures. He asked if she'd cleared it with the landlord. He said he'd hate to have to mention it, but rules were rules. Cherry set her mug down on the railing of the small wooden lookout the previous tenant had left at the back corner of the yard. She climbed two rungs of its ladder without thinking, just to put her hands on something solid. From up there she could see her whole patch of grass, the cedar box, and the strip of fence between her yard and his. She came back down. She told him she'd handle it today. She went inside and pulled out the pink box where she kept her planning notes. She found the lease folded under a checklist. She read the clause he meant. No alterations. No digging. No permanent installations. She read it twice. Then she looked at the cedar box. It sat on the grass. It wasn't bolted down. It wasn't sunk in. It was a container resting on dirt. She picked up her phone and called the landlord before she could talk herself out of it. She read him the clause. She described the box. She asked plainly if a freestanding planter counted. He laughed and said no, planters were fine, he had three on his own porch. She asked him to send that in an email. He did, within the hour. She printed the email and walked it to the fence. Her neighbor read it without speaking. He handed it back and went inside. Cherry stood there a moment with the paper in her hand. Her chest was still tight. She had expected to lose the bed. She had already been picturing the empty square of flattened grass. She carried the email back to the kitchen and laid it flat next to her journal and the glass bottle with the pink ribbon. She wrote one line under yesterday's notes: the box stays. Then she sat down. The bed was safe, but something else had shifted. She had acted before knowing the answer. She had called the landlord without a guarantee. The grass under the cedar box was still pressed flat from its weight, and she realized she was already thinking about a second box.