Gideon was already there with Button on a hand truck, June and Hattie flanking him like a small committee. Hattie wore mittens the size of lunch rolls. June carried a thermos. Ms. Kwan stood by the shed with a spade as if she had grown out of the frost.
"You came," Celeste said to Gideon.
"You scheduled it," he said. "I am practicing obedience to schedules that are not emergencies."
Hattie looked from Button to the crooked tree. "Are they going to be neighbors?"
"If they take," Ms. Kwan said. "Trees make no promises. People water. People wait. That is the whole religion."
They dug two holes where Celeste's mother had planted before, in a row of young evergreens at different heights, a timeline of Decembers made visible. Tully arrived late with Pocket illegally zipped into his jacket and a bag of compost he had been hoarding like gold. Reza sent a text that he could not leave the shop but had named a drink BUTTON'S COURAGE and would save two cups if they survived the dirt.
Digging frozen ground was ugly work. Everyone took turns. Hattie mostly supervised and named earthworms with undue honor. When the holes were ready, Celeste knelt and set her mother's tree in first. She did not make a speech. She pressed soil with her gloved hands—new gloves, red again, thicker—and breathed through her nose until the air burned less. Gideon waited until she nodded before he lifted Button in. Hattie patted both pots' emptied shells as if thanking them for their service.
"Will Uncle Gideon still have a corner?" Hattie asked suddenly, worried.
"The corner will have to learn a new job," Gideon said. "Maybe a chair that is not lonely. Maybe a lamp that is not apologetic. Maybe just space."
June poured thermos cocoa into lids and cups. They stood drinking in the cold, looking at two newly planted trees that looked, for now, like nothing much: sticks and hope and the memory of indoor lights.
Celeste took the brass star from her pocket, turned it once in her fingers, and put it back. Not yet. Not here. The garden did not need crowning. It needed weather and time.
"I am not all the way through this," she said to Gideon, quiet enough that Hattie, now chasing Pocket-related rumors around Tully's ankles, would not hear. "I may be uneven until spring. Longer."
"I am not all the way through mine," Gideon said. "I may still reach for projects when I should reach for words. If I do, say no louder."