"My mother bought a tree from Ms. Kwan every year," Celeste said. "Small. Potted. We kept it through the holidays and planted it in the community garden on Bergen in January if it survived, which it usually did, because she talked to it like it was a stubborn aunt. She died in March. Her apartment is still… mid-sentence. Lease ends in early January. I went to the lot for the last small one because I thought if I could do the tree, I could do the rest. Then you arrived with your corner crisis."
Gideon stood very still. The city moved around them: a bus sighing, a couple arguing gently about whether they needed cinnamon, a dog shaking snow from its coat.
"Celeste," he said. "I am so sorry."
"Do not be sorry in the big dramatic way," she said. "Be careful with Button. That is the useful version."
"I will," he said. And then, because he was human and because usefulness and panic sometimes wore the same coat: "I can bring it to you. Tonight. It should be yours."
She shook her head once, firmly. "Hattie named it. You do not un-name a child's tree because a woman on a sidewalk told you a sad story. Keep it. Water it. In January, if you want, we can talk about Bergen. Not before. I am not ready to turn you into a project manager for my grief."
He nodded. He looked, for a moment, like a man who had been handed a tool and told not to use it, which was nearly unbearable for someone whose whole profession was intervention.
"Third coffee?" he asked finally.
"Third coffee," she said. "But slower."
For a week they kept the slower pace. Texts in the afternoon. A shared link to a ridiculous article about architects who designed houses for cats. Celeste sent a photograph of the library's circulation desk decorated with paper snowflakes made by a volunteer who believed quantity was a spiritual practice. Gideon sent a photograph of Button with a new paper ornament Hattie had made: a wobbly heart with the word BRAVE written in glitter glue that had migrated onto the carpet.
June, who noticed everything, cornered Gideon while Hattie was at a classmate's birthday party downtown.
"You like her," June said.
"I do."
"Then do not treat her grief like a design flaw you can renovate out of the floor plan."