Ms. Kwan's reserve tree was slightly crooked in the leader, exactly as advertised by memory. Celeste paid thirteen fifty in cash. Ms. Kwan tied a bit of red twine around the pot and said, "Tell your mother hello when you talk to the dirt in January. She was never impressed by silence."
Celeste carried the tree home on the subway, drawing the kind of looks people give living things in transit. She set it on her mother's windowsill in the half-packed apartment and placed the brass star on top. It fit. Of course it fit. She sat on a packing box and cried in the efficient way of someone who had been postponing the appointment.
Tully arrived at three with more boxes and a Bluetooth speaker playing jazz at a volume that suggested respect for both mourning and productivity. They packed the linen closet. They packed the books, and Celeste found herself narrating which titles her mother had loved and which she had kept out of stubbornness. Tully labeled everything in block letters. Pocket, smuggled in against building policy in Tully's coat, slept on a folded quilt and lent the day an official witness.
At five, Celeste's phone buzzed. Not Gideon. June.
This is June Holt. Gideon does not know I have your number; Hattie stole it off his phone for fox book purposes and I confiscated it for aunt purposes. Are you free to talk five minutes as a person, not as my brother's soft landing?
Celeste stepped into the hallway. "This is Celeste."
"Good," June said. "I am going to be brief and slightly rude. Gideon is decent and sometimes dense. Hattie already likes you, which is a responsibility I take seriously. If you are in, be in at your own pace. If you are out, be out cleanly. Do not let him turn you into the winter renovation that proves he is healing. He has to do that part without using your life as lumber."
Celeste leaned her forehead against the cool wall. "That is the most loving threat I have received all year."
"I specialize," June said. "Also, if you want company packing, I am weirdly good at closets. Offer stands. No Gideon attached unless you request the bundle."
"I might request closets," Celeste said. "Not yet. Soon."
"Soon is a word I respect," June said, and hung up like a woman who had places to be and boundaries to maintain.
The days toward Christmas layered themselves in ordinary weather. Celeste worked. Gideon revised staircases. Hattie made more ornaments than physics should allow. Reza invented a seasonal drink that tasted like orange peel and optimism and refused to name it anything cute. Ms. Kwan sold the last of the tall trees and began quoting poets under her breath at anyone who lingered, because that was what she did when a season ended.
Celeste and Gideon met twice more before Christmas Eve: once for a walk through the park where the community garden on Bergen slept under mulch and snow, paths packed hard by boots; once at the library after closing, where Celeste let him help shelf a cart and he discovered the particular peace of putting the world in order by call number. They talked about Dana without dissection. They talked about Celeste's mother as a person who had hated cilantro and loved train stations. They did not solve each other. It felt, dangerously, like enough.