Page 50 of Where You're Planted

That settled, Jack asked Briar, “You ever seen butterfly eggs before?”

“No.”

“Want to?”

“Yes,” she said with a firm nod. Then she slipped her hand into his, and Jack took a deep breath before leading the way.

Tansy had a few minutes yet and couldn’t help but follow.

They stopped in the first garden beyond the main entrance and sat on the edge of a raised bed together. Jack began lifting leaves, and Briar marveled at them, smiling broadly, checking with him before ducking her face closer to the plants. He was smiling back, reaching to show her something else.

Tansy wasn’t a hundred percent satisfied, but it was enough for her to head to her one o’clock toddler story time.

She was able to keep an occasional eye on them as she read to toddlers from a picture book in the courtyard. To her surprise, Jack and Briar slowly drew a small crowd of older children. Like the library, this was an environment that felt safe enough for parents to give their kids free rein to wander. They were less vigilant, doing periodic scans of the park, checking that their kid was still around or with someone in a staff shirt, and returning to their conversations.

After showing them the butterfly eggs, Jack seemed to be talking about other plants in the same area, inviting them one at a time to touch things. Briar remained by his side the whole time, taking her role as assistant very seriously. He allowed her to interact with the plants first, and then she helped direct the other kids into a line to take turns looking. Both of them—Briar and Jack—looked surprisingly at ease. Tansy had a hunchit was because Jack could talk easily about plants and the park, even though at other times he was reticent and vaguely rude, and although Briar didn’t have the same plant knowledge, she had an encyclopedic memory for facts about bugs and reptiles and enjoyed instructing people. Being deputized undoubtedly made her feel special. Whatever the reasons, it made Tansy smile to see them both playing well with others.

After she finished her story time, she was due to help patrons under the canopy, but on the short walk over, the sky darkened as a mass of gray clouds crowded out the sun. The hit of anxiety was Pavlovian. It was also secondhand—not her own anxiety originally, but Briar’s. Only, she supposed she was splitting hairs. The dread was inherstomach now, tyingherinsides in knots.

“Hey,” she greeted Irma, out of breath. “I’m supposed to relieve you, but I think I need to go find Briar. It looks like rain is rolling in, and—”

“Go. I’m fine here.”

“Thank you!” She walked at a quick clip back the way she’d come, lurching into a jog as the first, fat raindrop splattered on her nose.

“Whoa, what’s up?” Kai asked, turning as soon as they passed each other on the path and jogging back alongside Tansy. Ian was with Kai, and they exchanged a quick, wordless goodbye that was so blatantly intimate, if Tansy was less preoccupied, she’d have asked where exactly they’d just come from and what they’d been doing.

“Briar,” she panted.

“Right. The rain.”

Together, they jogged to the garden where Tansy had last seen Briar and Jack. A crowd of maybe twenty children surrounded them now. She slowed to a walk and carefully woundher way through the group to reach Briar, who lit up at the sight of her and said, “Mom, they have pitcher plants here! They’re carnivores!”

“Wow,” Tansy panted, gulping back her worry. “That is so cool.”

“Why are you breathing hard?”

Tansy laughed tightly. “Well, I—” The conundrum: get ahead of the panic and calmly guide her to a place where she would feel secure, or wait and see how Briar handled it when she noticed the change in weather.

A raindrop fell on Briar’s cheek, and she blinked up at the sky. “Oh,” she said, “it’s starting to rain.”

“Right.”

“There was a forty percent chance,” Briar declared reasonably. “I checked earlier.”

The sparse drizzle turned to a soft patter that everyone around them noticed at the same time. It wasn’t an urgent rain. But the clouds seemed to darken overhead by the second.

“Would you like to get somewhere dry?” Tansy asked.

“Okay,” Briar said, but she turned back to the tall, tubelike plants she’d been looking at, distracted by the new discovery. “Do you think they’ll fill up with water?”

“I don’t know. We could come back and check after the rain rolls through.” Tansy mentally patted herself on the back for this response. Dr. Sharon had said that emphasizing the temporary nature of storms was one way to remind Briar that they, like her feelings about them, would pass.

Lightning pulsed like a weak strobe light in the clouds. Briar clocked it and immediately ticked off the seconds on her fingers silently. One, two, three—she was braced for the boom of thunder, but no one else was. Several children shrieked, startled by it.

“Still okay?” Tansy asked Briar.

Briar nodded, finally pulling herself from the plants. “Yes, but I don’t want to get wet,” she said calmly.

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