Spring came to Carroll Gardens quietly.
Aria noticed it the moment Ethan opened the wooden gate — the difference from January was not dramatic, not the sudden explosion of color that spring promised in photographs. It was subtler than that. The roses along the south wall showing the first tentative green of new growth. The raised beds with their winter covers removed, the soil dark and ready. The greenhouse door open for the first time, the outside air warm enough to stop needing the glass between the seedlings and the world.
She stood just inside the gate and breathed.
"It smells different," she said.
"Every season does," Ethan said beside her. "My mother used to say the garden had four vocabularies. Spring was the most hopeful."
Aria looked at the roses. New growth on old wood — the
