Part 6
Grant arrived at the house at eight-thirty on Saturday and opened every window in Sylvia’s greenhouse.
The room smelled of damp soil, cedar shelves, and the sharp dust of fertilizer that had split from a bag over winter. Dead vines hung from twine above the potting bench. Grant had avoided the space since the week Sylvia died, though its glass roof was visible from the kitchen sink.
He began with the obvious things: broken plastic trays, empty soil sacks, a mouse-chewed kneeling pad. At nine, Lena came through the side door carrying coffee and a box of contractor bags. She checked the pile beside him before setting anything down.
“The blue pots stay,” she said.
“Two are cracked.”
“They stay cracked.”
Grant moved them to the keep shelf.
They worked for three hours. Twice Lena corrected him when he reached for something without asking. Once Grant found her putting Sylvia’s seed envelopes into the trash because they were years out of date, and he took them back out. Neither apologized. They made a third box labeled DECIDE LATER and filled it faster than either wanted.
At noon, Jasper limped in from the kitchen and lay across the doorway. Grant started to tell him to move, then carried the bags around him instead. Lena noticed but kept sorting plant labels.
After Lena left, Grant loaded Sylvia’s blanket and two duffel bags into the truck. Habit took him as far as the highway turn toward the park bunkhouse. He sat there with his signal blinking while a line of cars passed, then switched it off and drove back to Sedro-Woolley.
That night he slept badly in his own room. Pipes clicked in the wall, the empty half of the closet seemed larger than he remembered, and Jasper paced twice before finding his old place beside the bed. Grant stayed. In the morning he made coffee in Sylvia’s machine and carried it into the greenhouse before opening the next box.
The work did not repair everything. Lena still flinched when Grant mentioned next year’s field season. Grant still wanted to defend the months he had spent at Alder Creek because the solitude had kept him functional when ordinary rooms had not. They stopped trying to settle the whole year in one conversation.
He came back the next Saturday. Lena came the week after that. By September, the greenhouse roof no longer leaked, though one pane remained clouded and a water stain marked the potting bench where Sylvia had left her metal watering can.
They did not finish every box. One shelf remained for spring, and neither of them forced a decision about Sylvia’s gardening coat hooks. Grant put Lena’s old house key back on the kitchen peg instead of asking whether she still wanted it. The next time she came, she used it.
The bobcats appeared once on a research camera in late August. The female crossed a fallen log after midnight, her right hind foot landing cleanly. Two juveniles followed at different distances, one stopping to strike at a moth before hurrying out of frame.
Lena sent Grant the twelve-second clip with no caption. He watched it twice, forwarded it to no one, and saved it in the park’s wildlife record where it belonged.
Wes Danner’s case was still moving through the system when autumn rain returned. Grant’s reprimand remained in his file. He worked paired patrols and trained two new rangers to document every trap sign, including the ones that seemed too small or too uncertain to matter. When either ranger moved ahead without calling position, Grant made them come back and start the approach again.
Jasper retired from the cabin for good. On cold mornings he walked one flat block with Grant, inspected the same cedar hedge, and turned home when he chose.
One November evening, Grant sat at Sylvia’s kitchen table with the last greenhouse box open in front of him. Inside were seed catalogs, a coil of green twine, and the small brass labels she had pressed into pots for thirty years. Rain ticked against the windows.
His phone chimed. Lena had sent a photograph from the center: not of AC-47, but of the empty Alder Creek woodshed after maintenance replaced the warped lower door panel. The new wood was pale against the old frame. The carpenter had left the shallow chain marks on the jamb untouched because they did not affect the seal.
Grant looked at the picture, then set the phone face down.
A key scraped in the side-door lock. Jasper lifted his head from the rug but did not bark. Lena came in carrying a pizza box under one arm and shook rain from her jacket onto the mat.
“You started on the last box without me,” she said.
“I opened it.”
“That’s starting.”
Grant moved Sylvia’s seed catalog off the second chair. Lena pushed the door closed with her heel, set the pizza between the brass labels and the green twine, and sat down.