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Tomatoes. Pumpkins. Herbs. Apples farther back. And yes… corn. Because apparently the universe thinks it’s funny. The seed I planted that morning all those months ago, never became corn. It became a tree.

None of us knows what kind.

Malakai says it doesn’t match anything he’s seen.

Ezra spends three weeks researching it.

Rhett named it Cornelius.

So now we have an ancient supernatural fertility tree named Cornelius.

I stopped arguing. Mostly.

The men left Ward Farm behind and have been discovering all the new things their immortality took from them.

Mariah and Ali refuse to attend anything involving the words farm, harvest, autumn, maze, rustic, orchard, hayride, or cider.

Reasonable.

Mercy leaves. That part hurts. She stayed with us for eleven days.

Eleven.

After two hundred and thirty-five years beneath Ward Farm, she gets eleven days of sunlight.

On the eleventh morning, we found her beneath Cornelius. Sitting against the trunk smiling.

Gone.

Human.

We buried her there.

No ribbon. No mask. No ritual.

Just Mercy.

Ezra visits every morning.

Sometimes I go with him. Sometimes I don’t. Some grief belongs to the people who carried it.

Tonight is different.

October thirty-first. One year. The first Harvest since Ward Farm burned.

No party. No tickets. No masks. No Bride.

Just us.

Candles around the garden. Food across the outdoor table. Wine. Music.

Mariah and Ali come for dinner and they leave before midnight.

Smart women.

At eleven fifty-eight, the four of us remain beneath the tree. Malakai pours wine into the soil. Rhett leaves an apple. Ezra places bread beside it.

I hold a handful of seeds.