Chloe in Willowmere

After that first afternoon, Dev came back. Every day after school, his backpack still on, he would find Mr. Chen already there — kneeling in the soil, moving slowly but with purpose. Mr. Chen taught without announcing that he was teaching: he simply showed, and waited, and showed again. On this particular afternoon he lifted a small seedling between two fingers and held it up to the light, telling Dev that the root was looking for something to hold onto. Dev leaned in close, his brow furrowed in that particular way of someone who has just heard something that matters. Chloe watched from the bench at the garden's edge, her blue notebook open, her pencil moving. She drew them without making a sound — the old man and the boy bent together over something small and green. Beneath her sketch, she wrote what she saw: something like patience, something like hope.