Under their scrutiny, I fought the urge to jerk my hand away, not sure I could get it out of the vise if I wanted to. Which I otherwise didn’t.

Luke towed me around the corner and down the ramp to the basement, chattering on about vegetable storage containers and old ladders, wire baskets and stands with baskets and more. By the time we reached the foot of the ramp and flicked on the lights, he was practically giddy.

Tin lights sparked to life, and I caught sight of a blur with a tail—Brutus, hot on the trail of a rat, I was sure. And there Luke stood, next to his bounty, with all the pride Brutus would display when he dumped said rat at my feet.

I gasped, smiling as I made my way toward the goods he’d arranged in the center of the long, crowded space, surrounded by the chaos of a hundred seventy years of discarded supplies. And just like he’d said, there was a small organizer made of wooden shelves and angled wired baskets, so you could reach right in and grab whatever suited you. There were several ladders, coils of rope, piles of ancient, salvaged wood. Sideboards, an apothecary cabinet, washboards and washtubs, pails of every shape and size. I imagined them all full of flowers and sitting proudly on the big farmhouse table and thought for a second that my heart might burst.

“Luke … I can’t believe all this stuff,” I breathed as I stepped into the mix, running a hand over one of the sideboards. “When was the last time your mom came down here?”

“I dunno, but it must have been forever. No one’s updated the shop since my grandma in the seventies. To be honest, she was probably the last person to come down here for anything other than fertilizer or hoses.”

My eyes widened, my smile wondrous. “I just had an idea.” I moved for the haphazardly stacked wooden crates. “We could make planters out of these, hang them vertically. Half of them with succulents, the other half with leafy greens—ivy, spider plants, baby rubber plants, oooh, or some coleus … their leaves have that purple in the middle. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do,” he said, still smiling. “They’d go well with Persian shield.”

I brightened up another dozen watts. “Genius. I think that should be our first installment. And what if…” My wheels turned, zipping through the catalog of riches Luke had uncovered. “I could make a flower cloud … pampas grass and heather, wheat, maybe…” I said to myself, thoughts clicking together behind every blink.

“Flower cloud?” he asked with skepticism written all over his face.

“It’s a thing,” I said absently. “An arrangement, usually monochromatic, shaped like a cloud.” I wandered toward some shelves, spotting crates of glassware I couldn’t make out from the ground. “What about these?” I pulled the ladder over and ascended. “Are these milk bottles?”

“Careful, Tess,” Luke warned, approaching as I climbed.