She does not come the next morning.

Elias notices this in the way you notice the absence of something you told yourself you weren’t expecting. He works through the first row and into the second. The gap in the corrugated panel catches morning light at an angle he has not paid attention to before. He can see the lane beyond it, empty, and the wall of the warehouse on the far side, and the strip of sky above that, which is the colour of nothing in particular.

He works.

At 09:15 he takes his break at the bench near the cold frame. He does this every morning — or rather: every morning except yesterday, and he is doing it again today, and he is being careful not to attribute significance to the fact that the bench faces the fence.

He drinks his coffee.

The lane stays empty.

He is not disappointed. He examines himself carefully on this point and finds it to be true. He is not disappointed. He is — something else. He is aware of the boundary of his yard in a way he has not been for years, as a line between this and everything outside it, and he is aware that yesterday something crossed that line, partially, briefly, and that the crossing changed the texture of the space without his permission.

He has not decided what to think about this.

After his break he repairs the cold frame latch, which has been sticking since January. He refills the water barrel from the standpipe. He turns the compost in the left-side bin, which has been developing well through the cold months and smells like it should — like the interior of something that is becoming something else.

At 11:40, heading back along the fence line toward the gate, he sees it.

A small object pushed through the gap in the panel, resting on the gravel on his side of the fence. He would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking at the gap, and he would not have been looking at the gap if he hadn’t spent the morning not looking at the gap.

He crouches down.

It is a seed packet. Commercial, the kind sold in the hardware district, no identifying information beyond the name of the plant on the front. The paper is slightly damp from the morning. It was not here yesterday. He would have seen it.

He turns it over. Nothing written on the back. No note. No explanation.

He looks at the name of the plant on the front for a long time.

Lathyrus odoratus. Sweet pea. Climbing vine, annual. Scented. No agricultural use, no nutritional value. Grown because it is beautiful and because it is fragile and because it will not be here in November.

He stays crouched for a moment, holding it.

Then he stands, and puts the packet in his coat pocket, and goes to check on the rose.

He will think about what it means later.

Or he will not think about it at all, and plant them in the south bed in April, and that will be a kind of answer too.