“Yes, exactly.” Rose giggled. Suddenly she had an idea. “Hey, Gran, can you come over here on your walker?”

“Why?”

“I want to take some pictures of us together with the seedlings and those flowers; the nasturtiums on the stakes make such a nice background.”

“Us together? But how? I’ll have to ring for Betty to take it.”

“No, Gran, a selfie.”

“Selfie? What in heaven’s name is a selfie?”

“I’ll show you. Let me run and get my selfie stick. I’ll be back by the time you get to the pixie snouts.”

Rose was back, and Gran was posed rather rigidly by the lettuce trays. She slid her eyes toward Rose as she opened the selfie stick and put her camera in it.

“Good Lord, what a contraption!” Rosalinda said. Rose stood next to her.

“Now look up and say cheese.”

“Nasturtiums!” Gran blurted.

A few minutes later Betty arrived with their dinner trays.

“Betty, Rose saw some sproutlings in the trays. We’ll have herbs and lettuce by the spring equinox. Tuesday, March twentieth, six thirty a.m.”

They ate their dinner mostly in silence, but when her grandmother did speak, Rose marveled at how she knew the location of every single seed she had planted and when it might sprout, and she even knew the precise date of the equinox.

“Gran! How in the world do you know the date, the day, and the very hour of the spring equinox?” Her grandmother looked up and cocked her head.

“Not really sure. I’m a gardener. Certain things just stick in one’s head, you know. While others . . .” She paused. “Just . . .” Her voice grew faint. “Just fade.”

The cry of a cat scratched the evening air.

“September!” Rose gasped.

“Oh no, dear, March. It’s always in March. The September equinox just passed.”

“Uh . . . not that September. Another one.”

“Another? How many Septembers can there be in one year?” She emitted a tiny giggle.

“I’ll be right back, Gran. Just want to check something outside.”

She went out the rear door of the greenhouse and into the back alley.

“September?” she whispered into the thickening dusk of the evening. “September, where are you? Did you stay behind? September?” She stood still and listened. This day that had started so horribly had by some miracle turned into a good day, but did this mean she could never go back to that other world—the world of Hatfield and Franny and a lonely princess? She felt as though she were straddling two worlds. The boxes upstairs in her bedroom were her past, and yet as she touched the locket, there was another past calling her, and the possibility of a father.

She heard Betty’s voice through the greenhouse door. “Rose, your grandmother wants you to check on the other herb trays before I take her upstairs.”

“Yes, I’ll be right in.”