Chapter Five — Things Worth Keeping

By seven fifteen, the greenhouse fundraiser had acquired an auctioneer, a broken card reader, and a fern that seemed personally offended by all of it.

Luna stood beneath a canopy of hanging plants, reading the fern's little card. LOT 27: BOSTON FERN. NEEDS PATIENCE. Half its fronds were brown. A thick green curl was pushing up through the center.

“Needs a priest,” Asher said over her shoulder.

“It's putting out new growth.”

“So does mold.”

“You are not winning custody of this plant.”

He held up both hands. “I was hoping for visitation.”

They had arrived at seven precisely, an achievement Asher had mentioned twice. The greenhouse occupied a converted municipal maintenance yard; its fundraiser was meant to replace a failing heating system before winter. Rows of tomato starts crowded one end. Handmade labels identified cuttings donated by neighborhood gardeners. At the auction tables, healthy orchids and glossy rubber plants were already drawing extravagant bids from people who appeared to have come prepared to win.

The battered fern had received none.

“Thirty dollars for something the size of a small car,” Luna murmured, looking at the orchid table, “and nobody wants a fern for five.”

“Poor marketing. The card should say artistically distressed.”

She handed him the bidding pencil. “Six dollars.”

“I thought I wasn't allowed to compete with you.”

“You're not. You're being deputized.”

Asher wrote their bid, then stopped to straighten the card so the pencil wouldn't tear it. Luna caught him doing it. Ever since the rain-soaked lanterns, she kept noticing how carefully he handled things he had absolutely no reason to care about.

A volunteer in bright yellow gardening gloves came bustling up. “You're interested in Twenty-Seven? Oh, good. I'm Marta. That's one of ours. The cold snap got it through a faulty window seal.”

“Does it have a name?” Luna asked.

“Several, none polite.” Marta glanced across the table. “We've got four more nobody's bidding on. We're moving the benches for heating repairs tonight. I can get them into storage, but there's only so much light. I'd rather they go somewhere somebody can give them a chance.”

Luna looked at Asher.

He looked at Luna.

“Don't,” she warned.

“I didn't say anything.”

“You've got a rescue-operation face.”

“I have many faces.”

“That's the worrying part.”

Ten minutes later they were operating out of a borrowed trolley and a wholly unauthorized command structure.

The remaining plants were a trailing pothos with a snapped vine, an enormous spider plant shedding babies, a jade whose pot had cracked, and a small citrus sapling with exactly three leaves. Asher carefully set the cracked jade inside a sound plastic tray while Luna read the instructions aloud. The volunteers had limited spare soil, which made the timing more urgent than their jokes suggested.

“Four plants,” she said. “Two people. One trolley. No car.”

“I can arrange a ride.”

“You can also tell me if this is going to interrupt work.”

Her tone was light. The question wasn't quite. He heard the memory of their argument in it.

“I have a session later tonight,” he said. “But not for another few hours. And I'm here because I want to be.”

She met his eyes for a second. “Okay. Then we need homes.”

They split the job. Luna took the citrus toward an older woman examining herb seedlings. Asher caught up with a couple debating whether their sunny apartment could support a pothos. He didn't sell them an impossible miracle. He asked about their windows, listened, and told them Marta was the person to ask about care. They went over to her before putting down a bid.

When he returned, Luna had recruited the herb gardener to adopt the citrus.

“It's a calamondin,” she said triumphantly. “Not a lemon, before you say it.”

“I was going to say you have a gift for organized crime.”

“The citrus family will be represented with dignity.”

Marta called the final lot. The spider plant went to a college student who wanted something impossible to kill, a description Marta immediately and sternly corrected. The pothos found a windowsill. That left the jade and Fern Twenty-Seven.

Asher entered one last bid. Luna countered with a dollar more.

He turned slowly. “You're bidding against me.”

“You were warned about ferns.”

“We're supposed to be allies.”

“Democracy is fragile.”

“That's not what this is.”

“Then why are there pencils?”

He withdrew his bid with an exaggerated sigh, making Marta laugh so hard she nearly lost her place in the receipts. Luna won the fern. Asher took the jade. Together they put the plants on the trolley and helped Marta wheel them to a repotting table while the final buyers collected their purchases.

“You're a good team,” Marta said, watching Asher cradle the cracked pot while Luna wound string around the fern's roots. “How long have you two been together?”

The string slipped out of Luna's fingers.

For a heartbeat the greenhouse was far too quiet. She could hear a hose dripping at the other end of the aisle, the clink of glass against a table, and Asher's breath beside her.

There was no safe technical answer. They had been going on dates. They had apologized to each other. She had kissed his cheek and held his hand in the rain. Nobody had asked what that made them.

“We've known each other a little over a week,” Luna said.

Marta smiled. “Oh, I wasn't asking when you met.”

Asher made a helpless sound that might have been laughter. “Marta, I think you're a much better auctioneer than you let on.”

“It's a fundraiser. I take every opportunity.” She collected the paperwork and departed with the cheerful ruthlessness of someone who had left a conversational grenade precisely where she wanted it.

Luna tightened the string again. “Well.”

“Well,” Asher repeated.

“Do not look smug. You're still holding a plant with a broken house.”

“I was actually thinking about how to answer her.”

That was worse than smugness. It made Luna look up.

“Were you?”

“Yeah.” He considered her, the quick wit not quite hiding the seriousness underneath. “I don't want to answer for both of us.”

The leaves of the little jade trembled where he held it. Luna reached across to steady the pot, letting her hand rest over his for a moment.

“Neither do I,” she said. “Not tonight.”

He nodded without pretending not to understand. She liked him more for it, which was becoming inconvenient.

When they finished, Marta brought them two cardboard carriers and a warning about overwatering. The fern had to go somewhere with indirect light, the jade somewhere bright. Neither plant could be left in a sealed car overnight.

“I've got a window for this fellow,” Asher said, lifting the jade. “You?”

“Bathroom window. The fern can judge my morning routine.”

“Seems qualified.”

They carried their ridiculous new dependents out toward the greenhouse doors. Evening had settled over the yard, leaving the glass panes dark enough to reflect the two of them walking side by side. Luna balanced the fern with one arm and reached for Asher's free hand with the other.

He took it immediately.

They had not answered Marta's question. But they hadn't walked away from it, either.