Chapter 3: Fertile Soil
Over the next few days, Meredith found herself looking forward to the morning arrival of Aaron in the same way she had looked forward to her favorite cousins coming over for a visit when she was a little girl. The tall, quiet young man was a calm, soothing presence on her fretful nerves, allowing her to help him in the yard and bantering her with a sly sense of humor she was just starting to unpack. Under their shared efforts, the yard was every day looking less like a military bomb range and more like a place she wouldn’t be ashamed to invite friends or family. The soil, refreshed both by recent rains and by an entire truckful of topsoil, hauled from the front to the back one weary wheelbarrow at a time, was now a thick and loamy black. Wandering lines like snail
