Page 45 of Where You're Planted

The sunshine glinted off the boat pin he’d given her, golden and bright. He liked that she wore it, that it seemed to give her some sense of security.

Tansy was gearing up to gently redirect Briar, just like she had back at the library earlier, but he headed it off, crouching low before Briar and turning his back to her. “Hop on.”

Briar wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek to the back of his shoulder, completely loose-limbed and trusting. He stepped up just below Tansy to resume their climb, but she didn’t move.

“This okay?” he asked.

She reached out, and for a moment, he thought she was going to touch his cheek. His heart kicked up, wanting it. Instead, she threaded her fingers through Briar’s curls over his shoulder. She was looking at her daughter when she said, “As long as it’s okay with you.”

It surprised Jack just how okay this was. “Wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t.”

For the first time, he noticed a dusting of freckles that spilled across the apples of her cheeks and her nose. As if sensing him studying her, her eyes slid to his, open and shining in the afternoon light, steady on him so long that he whispered, “What?”

She shook her head a little, as if she couldn’t believe whatever she was thinking. Then, she leaned into the opposite side from where Briar’s head rested heavily against him and said, low and soft, “You’re really great with her. Not everyone gets her. But you make it look…easy.”

“Itiseasy,” he said immediately.

Tansy’s eyes shone in the afternoon light, something like awe in her expression. It caught him off-guard. She started up the steps again, and he followed, wanting her to say more, wanting her to spell out the exact meaning of that expression for him. He shifted Briar a little higher on his back, and a sick-sweet feeling of déjà vu washed over him, although he’d neverdone this before. He wasn’t glimpsing a memory of something real, but of something he’d imagined once, a long time ago. Something he’d wanted. A person he’d wanted to be.

But he’d never gotten to be that guy. He literally was not made for it. He’d given up ideas like that a long time ago.

Tell that to his heart, though, which felt like it was pulsing straight through his back, reaching for the comforting heft of Briar there, while also spiraling out forward to Tansy. She glanced back as though she felt it. But he knew better. She was simply tethered to Briar, always gently orbiting her and managing her tides, like a moon to Briar’s planet. He supposed that made him some clunky meteor, drifting into their pull, hoping to get sucked in.

When the hell had that happened?

At the top of the stairs, Tansy wove through the dense trees, holding back branches for him, until they reentered the main park. He felt like he was coming out of a dark movie theater expecting it to be night, only to emerge into blinding afternoon sunlight. It was disorienting.

At the library, Tansy hugged Briar to her side and said to him, “I know this wasn’t how you wanted to spend your afternoon, but thank you.”

As it turned out, it was exactly how he wanted to spend his afternoon. It was how all afternoons should be spent. The inexplicable certainty of the thought rattled him.

He tried to tell her it was no trouble. But his mind was staticky, buzzing like that beehive in the greenhouse wall. “Right,” he mumbled. “Or…notright—it wasn’t a…”

And then he bolted.

“Okay. Bye then,” he heard her say. “Sorry, I guess.”

If his abrupt departure put her right back to being annoyed by him, that was probably for the best.

—

When Amy called a littleafter five, Jack was alone in Greta’s office—hisoffice now—punching the same button on the printer with increasing force as the computer announced it was having trouble communicating with the printer but offered no additional context forwhythe two machines wouldn’t sync up.

“Hey,” he muttered into his cell, scrubbing his face in frustration.

“Oh, you answered,” Amy said.

“Was I not supposed to?”

“I just figured it’d go to voicemail like the last ten times.”

“It hasn’t been ten ti—”

“I need a favor.”

Jack gave her his full attention, abandoning the printer and turning to look out the narrow vertical window into the park below. He’d been inexplicably agitated all afternoon, and catching up on office work, so he could avoid Tansy after that awkward departure earlier, had only exacerbated the tension spooling at the base of his neck.

“I was hoping to borrow your truck. I’m picking up something that won’t fit in my car.”

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