ZARA
“This one,” she said. “This exact one.”
She was crouching in front of a plant at the garden center with the focused certainty of someone who had done significant research and arrived at a conclusion not open to further discussion. She had been moving from section to section for twenty minutes with Elliot one step behind her and Sera two steps back, giving her the room she needed to make the decision herself.
The plant she was pointing at was a peony. Not yet in bloom. A small, structured thing in a terracotta pot that looked, to anyone who did not know what it was, like almost nothing. Three stalks. Some leaf. A promise rather than a proof.
Sera crouched beside her. “Do you know what it becomes.”
“Yes,” Zara said. “My friend’s grandmother has one. It is enormous. It smells like s
