"I have owned this shop eleven years," Reza said. "I can spot a repair job from the sidewalk. Sit. Talk. Tip well."
They sat. For the first ten minutes they talked about nothing: the cookies, the weather, a busker outside who insisted on playing carols on a saxophone that had seen better decades. Then Celeste put her hands flat on the table, red gloves removed, knuckles dry from library air and winter.
"My mother was not sentimental in the postcard way," she said. "She was practical. The trees were practical hope. Plant something. Watch it. Come back. The star was the only part that was pure theater, and even that she polished once a year like a tool. When you offered to put it on Button, it felt like you were trying to finish a sentence I am still writing."
"I understand," Gideon said. "Or I am trying to. Dana—my last relationship—ended in August. I keep reaching for projects because unfinished rooms scare me. That is my pattern, not your obligation."
Celeste nodded. "June seems like she would say that."
"June has said that with footnotes."
"Good for June." Celeste broke a cookie in half and did not eat it. "I am going back to Ms. Kwan today. She kept a small tree in reserve. I am going to buy it for my mother's windowsill for one last week, and then I am going to pack the rest of the apartment with Tully's bubble wrap, and then I am going to be a person who sometimes answers texts and sometimes needs two days. If that is too uneven for you, tell me now."
"It is not too uneven," Gideon said. "My life is currently a sister, a niece, a loud tree, a quiet tree, and a career spent arguing with staircases. Uneven is my native language."
"All right," Celeste said. "Then we will try again. Slowly. And if you ever reach for my grief like a spare room, I will say no louder."
"Please do."
They did not kiss. They did not declare. They finished the cookies. Reza, wiping a table nearby, looked almost disappointed by the lack of cinematic payoff and then privately approved of it, because his shop had hosted enough false fireworks to last him.
On the subway ride to Ms. Kwan's reserve tree, a teenager offered Celeste a seat because of the way she was holding the empty rolling cart, as if she already carried something heavy. Celeste sat. The teenager returned to headphones. The city, for once, performed a small kindness without paperwork. When Celeste later set the crooked tree on her mother's sill beneath the brass star, she whispered, "I am late. I am here." The radiator kicked on as if answering in the only language it had.
She spent that night making an inventory list for Pilar: what would be donated, what would go to storage, what would come home to the walk-up with the lemon-cleaner smell. The list was merciless and merciful at once. Under MISC she wrote star — keep. Under PLANTS she wrote tree — January garden if alive. Seeing the words outside her head made them less likely to escape.