"Absolutely not. Absolutely not! That house is my home. She wants me on the street? That manipulative little— I will not, she cannot, that is my home, Adrian, do you hear me? My home!"
I hear her. I'm holding the paper. I'm looking at the door.
And I’m thinking two things at the same time.
Section One: Sienna wants Cross Manor. William also wants Cross Manor. That's a conflict I cannot navigate from Paula's side because it becomes non-actionable under Section two
Section Two: I want to see Sienna Cross again.
I turn to Paula. She's still going, voice raw, face flushed, the composure she walked in with scattered across the conference table.
I smile. I’m going to enjoy this more than I should.
"I'm sorry to add to your difficulties, Mrs. Cross." I set the paper down. "But I'm afraid you'll need to seek legal representation elsewhere."
3
SIENNA
I have soil packed under my fingernails, dark and damp. I press my thumb into the bed and feel the give, the quiet resistance of earth that's been watered right, and something in my shoulders loosens for the first time since this morning.
"Mrs. Delvecchio, are you okay down there?" I ask.
She adjusts on the kneeling pillow beside me, one hand steadying against the raised bed. "I'm seventy-two, not dead. I did yoga for forty years. I can pull weeds."
I smile. She has a rhythm to her pulling, slow and certain, and she doesn't rip the roots. I taught her that on her first session. She remembered.
Around us, the other residents move between the raised beds at their own pace, some pruning, some just sitting in the sun.
The sun sits warm on the back of my neck, open and steady, nothing like the sealed air of a conference room, and I wipe my hands on my cargo pants, feeling the grit catch against the fabric. This is where I make sense. Dirt on my palms. Knees onthe ground. Not in a borrowed navy suit with the collar pressing against my throat every time I swallowed.
This morning, I walked into that conference room and my body remembered every room like it. Cold air. Hard surfaces. Someone else's territory. My pulse had climbed before I reached the door, and by the time I was led inside, my hands were damp against the suit pants.
So I did what I always do. I let the stillness drop over me like a second skin, smoothed my face into something flat and unreachable, and sat down across from the woman who married my father and the man hired to make sure I walked away empty-handed.
Plants do this. It's called stress memory. A drought-conditioned plant, when drought returns, responds faster, mobilizes its defenses with less effort. The cellular damage it sustained the first time reorganized its response architecture. It doesn't forget. It adapts. Becomes harder to kill.
I've been drought-conditioned since I was eight years old.
This morning Paula was like she always is. Predictable. Venomous. The comments designed to land where they'd would cause more damage. I looked at the window while she talked. Kept my hands flat on my thighs. I've heard versions of it for years. My body absorbs it, files it, moves on.
What she says about me stopped mattering a long time ago, because I learned early that correcting someone's version of you only gives them more material.
I hadn't accounted for the lawyer.
My hand closes around a clump of chickweed and I pull. The roots release clean.
Adrian Kade.
Tall, broad-shouldered, dark blonde hair pushed back from his face. Grey eyes that moved through the space with a quiet precision that read as habit rather than effort.
He looked at me when I walked through the door. It was the kind of look that doesn't leave you indifferent.
We shook hands.
When we shook hands, his grip was warm, firm, unhurried. And when I started to pull back, he didn't let go. Not forcefully. Not aggressively. And for a half-second my entire awareness narrowed to that single point of contact. The rest of the room faded. Just his hand on mine, the heat of his palm, the way his grey eyes held mine.
"You're frowning at that weed like it owes you money."
