Chapter 190

The garden had a way of asking for small things.

It never demanded grand gestures—just dirt under fingernails, a patient hand, a little water poured at the base of a hopeful shoot.

Today it asked for exactly that: patience.

I had told myself I came back for drawing. But charcoal still lay rolled and untouched in my satchel. The page that had been so honest with me that morning now felt like a mirr