What she really needed to do was deal with the yard. She’d mown it, but the flower beds looked, as Anna Maria put it while getting into her car to leave, “like moldy dog shit,” and the vegetable garden had been overrun with weeds and weedier tomato plants and squash vines left over from last year’s fallen fruits. She figured it was probably too late to do much with it besides make the best of the volunteer crops, but she decided to take Lillian up on her offer of spare seedlings. Gardening would also dispel some of the tension that shivered beneath her skin in all the places Morgan had touched her. A short text exchange confirmed the availability of all things green and growing, and Lillian invited her to stop over that evening. She stared at the rioting mess of a garden at her feet, then texted Morgan.

ER: I’ll be at your place to get plants from Lillian later. Will I see you?

The reply was instant.

MD: Wouldn’t miss it.

She dug a shovel, rake, and garden hoe out of the disorganized shed—a project for another day—and proceeded to do her best to remove the worst of the weeds. Her muscles burned with the unfamiliar abuse. Nell lay in the shade and chewed on a stick. She looked up each time Emilia swore at a particularly entrenched weed tree but made no move to help.

By five o’clock she was sweaty, sunburned, and exhausted.

“I am not a farmer,” she told her dog as she slumped on the porch. She’d tended houseplants in the apartment she no longer shared with Hannah. Most had probably perished by now. She doubted Skylar would care for them, and Hannah had no time for things that didn’t serve a purpose. Air purification and décor didn’t count.

Still, it would be nice to have fresh vegetables and herbs, assuming the effort involved to get them didn’t kill her. She glanced at the flower beds, where more weeds staked territorial claims over the faded mulch. One day at a time. Starting with the beds visible from the driveway probably would have been smarter than focusing on the vegetable garden, but she’d always hated the way mulch managed to wedge itself underneath her fingernails even with gloves.

The house felt empty without Anna Maria. Peaceful, but bereft, as if another departed human presence amplified her father’s absence. Floorboards creaked under her feet more loudly than usual when she got out of the shower, and she wiped the steam from the mirror to remind herself that she wasn’t a ghost.

“What are you doing here?” she asked her towel-clad self.

A message blinked at her from her phone.

MD: Running late today. Stay for dinner?

The crush of doubts dissipated, replaced by what was, without a doubt, pure and unadulterated lust.

ER: I’d love that.

MD: Bring Nell.