The roof wasn’t finished yet. Sunlight spilled through the missing panes, falling across stacks of lumber and unopened boxes of glass.
Nothing about the place felt abandoned.
It felt interrupted.
As though someone had simply gone home for the evening and planned to return the next day.
Before I stepped farther into the greenhouse, I noticed another door standing open beside it.
Inside was a small workshop.
A pottery wheel stood in the middle of the room.
My breath caught.
Seventeen years earlier, I’d taken a pottery class and made one crooked blue bowl that couldn’t sit flat on any table. I loved that ridiculous thing.
Then Dad died. Mom got sick. Work took over.
My passion for pottery just faded away.
Above the wheel hung a faded photograph of me holding that bowl, smiling with clay smeared across my cheek.
Beyond the workshop, shelves lined another room.
Jam. Honey. Pickles.
I hadn’t made blackberry jam since my mother died.
Nathan had once asked if I missed making it.
I’d told him I didn’t have time anymore.
Looking at those shelves, I realized Nathan had never believed me.
A folded note rested beneath a packet of tomato seeds.
It wasn’t sealed.
Just folded once.
I opened it carefully.
Ask Emily where she wants the tomatoes this year.
That was all.
One sentence.
I looked around the greenhouse, suddenly seeing it differently.
Nothing had been finished.
The beds were waiting.
The shelves had empty spaces.
Half the roof was still open.
This place wasn’t meant to be presented to me.
It was waiting for me to choose what came next.
Gravel crunched outside.
I turned.
Nathan stood in the doorway.
He looked from me to the note in my hand, then let out a slow breath.
“I was wondering when Biscuit would rat me out. I knew you’d end up here. You found it, didn’t you?”
I couldn’t help smiling.
“No?”
“He brought me here,” I said.
Nathan nodded.
“I guess he did.”
For a long moment neither of us spoke.
Five years of questions sat between us.
Finally, I held up the keys.
“You bought this place.”
“Five years ago.”
“Yes.”
“You hid it from me.”
“I did.”
I waited.
Nathan didn’t rush to defend himself. He simply stood there, letting me be angry.
“I thought you were having an affair, Nat.”
He winced. “Oops!”
“I started wondering whether I even knew you anymore.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“I could have.”
“So why didn’t you?”
Nathan looked around the greenhouse before answering.
“Do you remember the last time I asked where you wanted to go for your birthday?”
I frowned.
“No.”
“You said, ‘Whatever works.'”
I looked away.
“I thought you were just tired.” His voice stayed quiet. “But then it became your answer for everything.”
The words settled over the room.
He gave a sad little smile.
“You stopped choosing, Em.”
I wanted to argue.
To tell him life was complicated.
That grief changed people.
That responsibilities came first.
Instead, I realized I couldn’t remember the last thing I’d asked for simply because I wanted it.
“I found this place a few months after your mom passed away,” Nathan admitted. “You once told me your dream house would have a place where you could make pottery, a greenhouse, and enough room to grow tomatoes.”
“I don’t remember saying that.”
He smiled gently.
“But I do.”
I looked around again.
The workshop.
The greenhouse.
The unfinished kitchen.
Nathan hadn’t been building another life.
He’d been trying to rebuild the one I’d quietly abandoned.
“You should’ve trusted me enough to tell me, Nat.”
“I might’ve said no.”
“I might’ve thought you were crazy.”
A laugh escaped him.
“I was prepared for that.”
I laughed too, shaking my head.
“You’ve had five years to think about your answers.”
“I’ve had five years to realize what a mess I made of this,” he said. “I hid the deed and everything in the couch because I wanted to surprise you once it was all finished. I came here every Saturday with spare keys just to get it done.”
Biscuit wandered in carrying a muddy tennis ball.
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