Dad inhaled sharply.
“The garden?”
Diane nodded.
According to the date on the envelope, Ruth had begun planning something decades before any of us understood what the land would become.
People continued arriving behind us.
Doors opened.
Buckets rattled.
Someone laughed.
Morning gathered over the rows.
And Dad, standing at the edge of the garden he had believed began with a box of beans, realized its story had started long before him.
Claire held Ruth’s unopened letter in both hands.
“Should we read it?”
Dad looked over the garden.
Then at the people waiting to plant.
He smiled.
“After the first row.”
And together, as the sun rose over Ruth’s Row, we walked back toward the soil.
