Page 110 of Where You're Planted

“If it does, you will save yourself. You will be okay. Briar will be okay. You’ve proven that. But you know what you can’t save?”

“What?”

“Something you don’t let yourself have in the first place.”

Tansy buried her face in Kai’s shoulder. They were right. She felt it in her heart, an aching, throbbing answer ofHim, him, him.

She pushed back suddenly and checked her watch. “Shit.”

“What?”

“His presentation. It’s tonight. He’s afraid of public speaking.” She grabbed her purse off the table, about to dig inside for her keys, only for Kai to snatch the whole bag.

“You can’t drive.”

“I have to be there, Kai. He needs me.” She pushed past them into the living room, her urgent footsteps startling Irma awake.

“What’s happening?” she demanded.

“Marianne, are you sober?” Kai shouted, following Tansy a beat later into the room.

“Yes,” she said, wary.

“Good.” Kai tossed Marianne’s keys at her. “You’re driving us downtown.”

“Us?” Tansy asked.

“You think I got so deeply invested in this all these months just to miss a grand gesture?”

“Grand gesture?” Irma slurred. “I’m coming, too.”

“Okay, whatever,” Tansy said, grabbing Briar’s backpack and motioning for her to close her book. “We just need togo. It starts in thirty minutes.”

“Can we even make it?” Marianne asked, doubtful.

Irma pushed her toward the door. “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”

“Too soon, Irma,” Kai said on a laugh. “Too fucking soon.”

34

Jack

“You done yet?” Jack asked for the fifth time in as many minutes as he paced in the quiet meeting room.

“Almost,” Ian said, scrunching his face in frustration at his laptop screen. “There’s something wrong with these transitions.”

“But it’s all there? The graphs? The photos?”

Ian rubbed his forehead and turned an uncertain look on Jack.

“Keep clicking,” Jack told him, motioning to put his hands back on the keyboard.

Ian didn’t move. “Are youcompletelysure this is going to work?” His eyes fell to the stack of professionally printed and bound packets they’d put together last week, which Jack had declaredall wrongon Sunday. In the five days since, they’d thrown that whole first presentation out the window and started over from scratch in a completely different direction.

The truth was, Jackwasn’tsure of their new plan, the PowerPoint for which they were still cobbling together five minutes before his presentation. That glossy packet contained his best argument for funding the gardens’ expansion. It included all of his expertise and experience, pages of data, and compelling projections. Itcouldwin this grant, he knew.

But it didn’tfeelright.

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