Sera helped Aubrey last night. She kissed me. She stayed, and then the phone buzzed and she left. I'm turning those two facts over like stones, looking for where they fit together, and they don't, not yet, not cleanly.
“What just happened? Why did Sera go?” I ask.
Kev sighs and the hollows in his cheeks look deeper. “You didn't do anything wrong. Neither of you did. Sera's hurting and she doesn't know how to let us in.” A pause. “This is not on you. You're both perfect. You know that.”
Perfect.The word sinks into my chest and still, there are barbs that don’t unhook. “I want her here, with us. She belongs down here with us.”
He shoves back from the table, muscle ticking at his temple. “Yes, she does. She just doesn't know how to let herself fit with us. I won't leave things like this. I'll go up and talk to her.”
His footfalls echo as he climbs the stairs before he knocks on her door. There is the soft give of her bedroom door opening then the click of it pulling shut behind him.
Lex sets his coffee down. “Whatever's going on with her, we'll sort it out until she lets us in.”
Aubrey licks his lips. “Is that what you're calling it? Supporting her, like you did on the kitchen bench yesterday?”
Ezra makes a sound into his mug that is not quite a cough.
Lex's brows flick up. “I think you liked it as much as we did, didn't you, omega?”
Aubrey perfumes, just a thread of it, and a smile pulls up at the edge of his mouth. “I think we all did.”
Something unknots in my chest. Not gone, but enough to breathe.
“We started something for you in the yard yesterday.” Ezra rubs the back of his neck. “We thought you might like agreenhouse to work in. And we're working on a frame over the patio because you like it out there so much. Going to close it in. It's nowhere near finished, but I wanted to check with you before we went any further. I know we should have asked first. It's your space, and we just started building without really...”
He trails off and I look up.
There. At the end of the yard are the bones of a frame. Around the patio, a structure takes shape. Our chair is untouched despite the work around it.
“You… that's…” I say, because I couldn't have made anything more perfect. “That's a big greenhouse.”
“We've completed a small section where you can start potting. If you like,” Lex says.
I grip Aubrey's hand in mine, not quite believing what I see. It's so thoughtful. And perfect.
“Kev's been doing most of the actual construction.” Ezra smiles. “Turns out he's terrifyingly competent with power tools. Lex drew up the plans. I'm mostly hauling materials and trying not to hit my thumb with the hammer.”
Aubrey makes a sound beside me. “How many times have you hit your thumb?”
“Twice,” Ezra says. “Three times if you count yesterday when I thought I'd missed and then hadn't.”
The woodsmoke in Ezra's scent warms. “I brought other stuff too. Planters. Soil. Some strawberry seedlings. Which was probably a mistake because I have no idea if they’re in season. There's no pressure. And we can keep building if you'd rather watch us make fools of ourselves with construction equipment. That's fine too.”
Strawberry seedlings.
Dad's hands in the dirt. The greenhouse heating up behind the shelves of wild mint, the way he'd crouch down to show me how to firm the roots in.Gentle, Espie. Like this.
“This is… how did you know?” I take in Lex and Ezra's wide smiles. Turn to Aubrey. “You know how to plant strawberries?” I ask him.
“No,” he says. “But I suspect you're about to fix that.”
I open the door and walk outside. The lawn is damp under my feet, the grass still holding the cold from overnight. Up close the frame is bigger than how I saw it from the window. It takes up the whole back fence, end to end. There's so much space. Raised beds along the back wall, room to move between them, room to grow things that need height. I do a fast, involuntary calculation: tomatoes along the south-facing wall, herbs near the door for easy access, the strawberries where the morning light will hit longest.
The finished section is at the near end. Someone has set up a potting bench, solid and not temporary, and laid out the seedlings and tools the way Ezra described, trowels and gloves in a row, a bag of soil propped open and ready. It smells like a greenhouse already. Soil and green and the particular closeness of glass-trapped air.
“When did you manage all this?” I ask.
“A crew that specializes in construction for omegas came in overnight,” Lex says behind me. “We have contacts. People who owe us favors.”
