“Leave it, Kira. Come on.”
Kira flinched. Not much. Just enough.
Then she turned and ran back across the yard.
I stood in the doorway with the plant and watched them go.
My husband came up behind me. “You okay?”
I looked down at the fern. “I don’t know yet.”
He touched one of the drooping fronds lightly. “Needs repotting.”
We brought it inside anyway and set it near the window in the sun room we had been building together. Later that evening he loosened the root ball gently while I found a larger pot and fresh soil, and we worked in comfortable silence, and something about that made my throat ache.
Two people taking care of a plant that nobody else had taken care of properly. It felt obvious and maybe a little on the nose, but there it was.
When we finished the fern looked less doomed. Not healed. Just given a better situation to recover in.
