Page 24
Barrett wiped his hands on a napkin before moving any closer.
I turned through the pages. Pressed flowers. Leaves. Notes. Drawings.
He leaned over the table. “She did all this?”
I nodded. “Over decades.”
“She was a botanist?”
“Not officially.” I smiled. “She would have hated that distinction.”
“What was she?”
“Curious.” The answer came before I had to think about it. I ran my fingertips along the edge of a pressed leaf. “She wanted to know everything. Why one plant grew on one side of a hill and not the other. Why people used one bark for fever and another for pain. She talked to everybody—gardeners, farmers, herbalists. Anyone who knew something she didn’t.”
“Sounds like you,” Barrett said softly.
I looked up at him. “I used to be.”
His brow furrowed. “What happened?”
I ran my thumb along the edge of the page. “I got good at it. At science. At being taken seriously. There’s a difference between loving something and proving you deserve to study it.” I looked down at Grandma’s handwriting. “She never cared whether anyone thought she was serious. I cared a lot.”
“Why did you need to prove it?”
“Because people listen when you have credentials.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Do they?”
“Sometimes.” I laughed softly. “Somewhere along the way, I stopped being the girl who loved plants and became the woman who needed to prove she knew more about them than everyone else in the room.”
Barrett studied me. “Because you love them.”
The simple statement tightened my throat. “Yes.”
“Can tell.”
“How?”
“You forget everything else when you find something.”
I smiled faintly. “Including eating lunch.”
Barrett’s mouth curved. “Including me.”
My gaze flew to his. “I don’t forget you.”
His smile disappeared.
Neither of us moved.
My heartbeat suddenly became stupidly loud.
I tore my gaze away and turned to Grandma’s unfinished drawing. “This is the plant.”
Barrett shifted around the table and lowered himself onto the bench beside me, his thigh settling against mine.
I could have moved. I didn’t.
