He shook his head, his fingers tightening around her joint. “You are exactly where you need to be. The only place able to nourish your spirit.”

Her gaze wandered away then, but she wasn’t so much looking from him as looking to something else. Something not in this room at all. Seeing, perhaps, the family that clearly indulged her. The home in which she’d passed so many happy years, discovering new joys even after all this time. Even her presence here, so far from her family, spoke of their love for her—otherwise they never would have let her come and explore.

She let out the breath she’d drawn in, just as slowly. “Maybe. But I can’t stay there forever. Expectations, you know.”

He did. Oh, how he did. They were their own set of vines, left all too often to squeeze and constrict and kill. But they too could be controlled. Trained into safe places. Used to climb instead of pull one down. “I have found that when a transplant is necessary, finding a new place for the plant ought indeed to be undertaken with great care. Sometimes the shock is too great for it, and it won’t survive. But other times . . . other times it will flourish in its new environs far more than it ever did in its old.”

She blinked, her gaze falling to the floor. “How do you ever find such a place though? And how can you be sure you’re not consigning the plant to destruction?”

“There are never such certainties in life.” One never knew when a boat would overturn in a storm and steal one’s parents. When disease would eat away at one’s brother. When madness would steal one’s grandmother’s mind.

When the promise of else would lure one’s sister away.

He gave her elbow a gentle squeeze. “This is why we don’t transplant anything until it’s necessary. But sometimes it is. And so, we learn what we can and make the best decision possible, do the work to the best of our ability, tend it with care. And we pray, trusting that the Master Gardener will bless our efforts.”

She looked at him again, her brows lifted, and, finally, a shaft of welcome amusement bloomed in her eyes and on her lips. “You pray for your plants?”

“Each and every one of them.” Both human and botanical.

She clearly understood the duality, given the sparkle in her eye. “Where exactly is your church, Mr. Tremayne?”