Arc 6: What Comes Next
Page 91
When Summer Leaned In
A few weeks changed the garden so completely that Chloe had to stop at the gate and take it in all over again. Vines had climbed, blossoms had opened, and the careful little beds they had worried over now answered them with a kind of cheerful abundance. Rosie, delighted by the scale of it, declared that everything had gotten bigger when no one was looking, while Mr. Chen observed with quiet satisfaction that this was how gardens did their best work. Marco arrived with a tray from the bakery and his usual dry humor, and even his teasing could not hide how proud he was of what the place had become. Chloe moved among them with her notebook in hand, feeling that strange, tender sensation of watching something once-fragile turn sturdy before her eyes. By the time she sat down to write, summer no longer felt like a possibility approaching from far off. It felt present already, green and warm around them, as if Willowmere itself had exhaled and begun to grow in earnest.