Lillian squealed. “He’s perfect for you!”

“He’s a mess.” Bryony turned into her driveway and hit the garage door remote.

“You need a mess in your life, Bry. You need a little wild to liven up the manicured life you’ve managed to put together for yourself, by yourself.”

Bryony turned off the car. “What if he turns out to be more like an invasive weed?”

“He’s a sweetie,” Lillian cooed. “I can tell. Ask Mitch if Cal has a girlfriend.”

“Mitch won’t know.” Bryony’s brother could win at bar trivia, but he couldn’t remember his own wife’s birth date. “When did you know Rick was the one for you?” she asked as she unlocked the back door and walked into her kitchen.

“The first time I saw him,” Lillian said.

Bryony sighed. She had skipped supper but experienced no hunger, a classic symptom. “See you in the morning, Lil.” She walked to the hall and dropped her purse on the side table.

“You okay?” Lillian asked. “I was trying to be helpful. Did I overstep?”

“No, I’m just tired. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Are you sure? Now I feel bad.”

“Go be with Rick.” Bryony forced lightness into her voice. “I’m fine.”

Bryony ended the call. The bravado of forcing a piece of pie onto Cal Forster dissipated into exhaustion. She did like him. And she did want to know if he liked her pie, if he liked her. She walked into her living room and fell back onto the couch.

Men were like pie—delicious, habit forming, and in the end, the reason a woman had to work hard to get herself back in shape.

Pulling the plush throw from the back of the couch, Bryony covered herself from chin to toe. The morning paper lay on the coffee table, still open to the horoscope she had read earlier. She extricated her arm, picked up the paper, and read again.

Now is not the time to open yourself to possibilities from the outside. As the timeline of your life on Earth grows shorter, survival requires conservation of energy.

Bryony needed to focus on what she herself could generate. The urge to root herself in a project pulsated, pulled her closer to the Earth, and promised to ground her in knowing her growing season had not come to an end.

She dropped the paper and pulled the afghan over her head while thinking of something she had learned in botany and never forgotten.

Some flowers, like tulips and poppies, demonstrate nyctinasty. They close up at night to preserve their strength.

Bryony snuggled deeper into the couch, surrendering to her own nyctinastic tendencies, peace pulsating down her neck, spreading across her shoulders and down her arms. In the garden of her soul, she remembered she was already planted. She knew how and where to find what she needed to grow. And she did not need Cal Forster, or any other man, to shine his light on her.

CAL CONFIDES IN BRY

The school day had ended. Cal sat with his feet crossed and propped on his desk, arms behind his head, his hands cradling his neck. “I think you’ll like this setting.”

Todd sat in a chair beside the desk, hunched over his books, his tennis shoes poised on their toes. He seemed like a good kid, but unsure of himself. Cal chalked it up to the dyslexia. When they met on the first day of school, Todd had said his elementary school teachers didn’t recognize the problem for years. The kids had teased him, and his dad “blew up” when he learned his son couldn’t read in third grade.

“Do I have to wear a uniform?” Todd asked.

“It’s not a uniform kind of place. I’m sure a nice pair of jeans and a clean shirt with no rips or stains will pass.” Cal pointed the pen in his hand at Todd. “Remember what we talked about in class? No T-shirts with slogans. No matter how much you think it’s a neutral statement, inevitably someone will find it offensive.”

Todd looked up. “That’s the day I learned the word ‘benign.’” He was a good looking kid, which would be obvious if he cut the hair hanging in his face. “I remember you said, ‘No such thing as a benign T-shirt slogan.’”

Cal brought his arms forward and dropped his feet to the floor. “I’ll bet most of the kids in the room had no idea what I meant. You were the only one who asked. Thanks for that.”

“I like it when you use big words with us,” Todd said.

Cal shook his head. Benign was not a big word in his estimation. Maybe he should have taught Kindergarten, instilled a love for an expansive vocabulary in those absorbent five-year-old brains. He closed his black planning book. “Be there at seven a.m. on Friday. Don’t be late, and do not embarrass yourself or me. Neither would reflect well on your grade.”

“It’s pass, fail,” Todd said. “You already told us if we, ‘show up when scheduled, don’t get fired, and don’t end up being taken to jail for something illegal on the job,’ we pass.”

“You do listen well.” Cal smiled. “Anything else on your mind before we blow this popsicle stand?”

“There is something I wanted to talk to you about.” Todd lowered his eyes to the floor, then looked up. “If I tell you something, can you keep it a secret?”

“Does this secret include you planning to hurt someone else, or someone else hurting you or another person?” Some problems were best handled by the school counselor. Cal would listen long enough to steer the boy in the right direction.

“No, no.” Todd shook his head violently back and forth. “Nothing like that.”

“And is keeping this secret hurting you?” Cal asked.

“Yes, I think it is hurting me,” Todd said.

“Then fire away.”

“Funny choice of words,” Todd whispered.

“What’s the problem?” Cal put his hands back behind his head again. Sometimes students opened up when he looked less urgent, almost unconcerned.

“It’s kind of complicated,” Todd mumbled. “But I want you to know, just so I know I’m not hiding anything.”

Cal nodded. “Go on.”

“When I was ten, my older brother worked in a restaurant. He knew where they kept the cash, and he broke in one night to steal it. While he was there, he decided to treat himself to a burger, started a fire, and ended up confessing the whole thing to the nine-one-one operator.” Todd raised his eyes with a look of expectation.

“Why are you telling me this?” Cal asked. Was the kid worried he’d repeat his brother’s mistake?

Todd sighed. “Well, that’s not the whole story. A firefighter fell through the roof and died. His kids were my age. My brother’s in prison for a long time, and I”—Todd stood and paced to the window—“announced at the age of eleven, that I wanted to be a firefighter when I grew up. So, that’s what my father expects now. Whenever people ask me what I want to do when I graduate, my father says, ‘He’s going to be a firefighter.’”

“And do you still want to be a firefighter?” Cal asked.

“No!” Todd answered. “Not at all. The coffee shop sounds great for now. I just don’t know how I’m going to tell my father about the firefighter thing, and I’m worried he’ll think that working in a coffee shop is about the least manly thing I can do.”

Cal lowered his feet to the floor and put his fingertips on the edge of his desk. “Stand firm in the path of your own choosing. Don’t try to atone for your brother’s missteps. The truth is, you can’t.”

“What about my Dad?” Todd asked. “He got super depressed when James went to prison. He lost his job. We moved here to live with my grandparents for a while. When I started talking about being a firefighter, things got a little better.”

“So, your father pinned his need for redemption on you? I think you’d do well to talk to the school counselor, but whatever you do, remember you’re a good guy, whether or not your father feels disappointed.”