“I’ve been practicing.”
She let him try.
After dinner, he handed her an envelope. Inside was a modest check and a note saying he wanted to begin repaying what she had spent during his illness.
Evelyn placed it between them.
“You cannot buy your way back.”
“I know.”
“And you cannot undo your transplant by paying for it.”
“I know that, too.”
She watched his face.
“This isn’t for the house,” he said. “Or for anything later. You carried expenses that belonged to my life. I can carry some now.”
She accepted the check after a long silence.
They agreed on an amount he could afford. No missed rent, no new borrowing, no grand promises.
That evening, Evelyn took the hospital envelope from her desk.
“There’s something else in here.”
He stiffened slightly.
She noticed, and her expression softened.
“Nothing you owe.”
She withdrew a smaller envelope, brittle at the fold. Inside lay an old packet of sweet-pea seeds and a square of paper.
He recognized his handwriting before he remembered writing it.
When I’m better, let’s plant these together.
He held the note with both hands.
“I bought those at the hospital gift shop.”
“You made the nurse take you downstairs.”
“I don’t remember giving them to you.”
“You were tired afterward.”
He looked from the seeds to her face.
She had kept them through the transplant, her husband’s death, the mortgage payments, the torn letter, the sale.
“I’d forgotten,” he whispered.
“I hadn’t.”
He pressed his lips together.
All those years, he had imagined she must be waiting for him to accomplish something large enough to justify what she had sacrificed.
She had been keeping a packet of seeds.
“I thought I needed to show you my life had amounted to something.”
Evelyn touched the little note.
“You asked to spend a spring with me. I was happy with that.”
He bowed his head.
This time, when she reached across the table, she rested her hand over his.
The following spring, they planted fresh sweet peas beneath the kitchen window. The old packet stayed safely in Evelyn’s drawer; she had no intention of gambling a memory on whether the seeds would sprout.
Her son built a simple trellis and checked its height with her before fixing it in place.
She directed him from a chair in the sun, a bowl of seeds balanced on her knees.
