What We Buried in the Garden

The funeral reception had that particular quality of performances everywhere—people hitting their marks, delivering lines they'd rehearsed in mirrors. Elena stood by the buffet, nursing champagne that had gone warm, watching Richard's widow laugh at something the junior partner said. The woman's **hat** was a dramatic black straw thing, tilted at an angle that suggested grief as an accessory rather than an experience.

Elena should have been the one wearing black dramatically. She should have been somewhere else entirely.

Then she saw him—Richard's brother, Adrian, standing on the back porch, **running** his thumb along the condensation on a beer bottle. Elena stepped outside into the humid evening. The air smelled of impending rain and the neighbor's barbecue.

"She doesn't know," Adrian said, without turning.

"Know what?"

He faced her then. His dark **hair** had started silvering at the temples, something that hadn't been true three years ago when she'd ended it. When she'd chosen Richard because Richard was safe, because Richard didn't look at her like she was a puzzle he needed to solve.

"About us," Adrian said. "About the summer we spent pretending we were just friends working late. About the garden."

Elena's palm went to her throat, a reflex she couldn't suppress. "There's nothing to know. We made mistakes. We moved on."

"Did we?" Adrian stepped closer. "Because I remember you standing in my kitchen with dirt under your fingernails, holding that tomato plant like it was something precious. We buried something in that garden, El. Not just vegetables."

A **dog** barked somewhere in the distance—a sharp, lonely sound that cut through the heavy silence between them. Elena had always wanted a dog. Richard had been allergic, or so he'd claimed. Another thing she'd accepted without question.

"Richard's dead," she said, because it was the only true thing she had left. "Whatever happened three years ago doesn't matter now."

"Doesn't it?" Adrian's eyes searched hers, and she saw it again—that terrifying way he looked at her, like she was worth the effort of being understood. "Because I'm still here. I'm still living in that house. And the tomatoes are coming in early this year."

The first raindrop fell between them, dark against the wooden porch.

"I should go back inside," Elena said, but she didn't move.

"You should," Adrian agreed. "But you won't."

He was right. She stood there as the sky opened up, wondering if it was possible to begin again in the middle of your life, if some mistakes were worth making twice.