The following Saturday, Kelsey arrived in brand-new gardening gloves.
“This is humiliating,” she said.
I handed her packet number one.
“Lavender.”
She asked where it went.
I pointed to Grandma’s map.
By lunchtime, Kelsey had mud on her shoes.
“How many did I plant?”
“Eight.”
“Eight?”
“Only 278 left.”
The next Saturday, she returned wearing old jeans.
That was the first sign something had changed.
PART 3
As the weeks passed, Kelsey slowly began to understand what the garden really was.
While planting flowers around an old bench, she asked why they were arranged that way.
I explained that Grandma and Grandpa had sat there every anniversary.
Another week, she asked about the bee balm. I told her Grandma planted it after a difficult summer because she wanted something cheerful that refused to disappear.
Neighbors shared stories too: roses that survived a storm, herbs Grandma used for soup, and lilies planted after my graduation.
Kelsey stopped joking.
She no longer saw landscaping.
She saw history.
One afternoon, she stood beneath the wedding arch.
“I thought it looked beautiful,” she said quietly. “I didn’t realize I was taking beauty from somewhere else to create it.”
By the eighth Saturday, only one packet remained.
Number 286.
A peony root.
Kelsey held it carefully.
“The last one?”
I nodded.
She knelt in the place marked on Grandma’s map, measured twice, dug the hole, and gently covered the root with soil.
No rushing. No complaining.
When she stood, her hands were filthy.
“These were planted when you were born, right?”
“Yes.”
She looked across the garden.
“I thought I was only cutting flowers. I didn’t understand I was destroying things people had built memories around.”
For the first time since the wedding, I believed her apology.
Then Zac surprised both of us.
