She pulled her car into the employee lot. She’d heard from Keith yesterday. He always initiated contact, but he rarely texted more than once a month. She supposed he didn’t want to risk Ellis giving up on what little communication they had.

Their six-word exchanges had become a sort of joke between them since his first text more than a year and a half before. They each delivered three words, never one or two, and he never broke the one-text-per-day limit, even when one of her answers elicited a response. Like the time he asked, How’s it going? and she replied, Got a job. He’d waited until the next day to ask, What’s the job? She replied, A plant nursery.

Ellis looked at her phone, and her chest tightened. I’m getting married.

She stared at the three words. Keith Gephardt getting married. Yesterday he had asked, How are you? and she’d answered, I’m doing great, because all weekend she’d been keyed up about a house a real estate agent had shown her on Friday. She was going back to look at it after work.

The news was difficult to process. When she imagined Keith, she didn’t associate him with another woman. She saw him at their table at Pink Horses grinning at her, looking into her eyes after they slow danced. She saw him drinking cognac in the snow. Laughing as he lifted off her layers of clothes inside the tent.

He was probably waiting for an answer.

Ellis typed three words: How great! Congratulations! She pressed “Send.”

He couldn’t answer. That was their limit for the day.

But maybe the game was over. Maybe that was why he’d told her. He was trying to let her know they had to stop.

Ellis still had five minutes until she was supposed to be inside the nursery.

I’m happy for you, Keith, but we should stop doing this now, she wrote.

Hey, you broke the rules!

So he hadn’t expected to stop.

We’re breaking bigger rules if we keep texting.

He didn’t answer for a minute.

I guess you’re right.

Have a good life. I mean that.

You too. And so do I.

She stared at their last words until the phone went black and her face reflected back at her. Like when she’d put her phone beneath the rock in the river. That was the day she’d met the park ranger.

She threw the phone into her backpack and got out of the car. She had a lot to do. She was making mixed planters to show off the pansies, snapdragons, and other fall annuals. And later, a big shipment of camellias was coming in. Gardening was a year-round hobby in north-central Florida.

She had time to make only one planter. The garden shop was busy for a Monday morning. She helped a customer select ten shrubs to make a privacy barrier and loaded them into her pickup. She discussed different kinds of bamboo with another customer. A woman using a cane asked for help pulling her cart around the lot as she selected annuals.

At noon, she took time to eat lunch because the shipment would arrive soon. She sat in her usual place at the picnic bench beneath a huge live oak behind the garden shop building. Ellis loved it back there. There was a small trickling pond—one of four the owners had built to display water plants—and the space was bordered with blooming azaleas in the spring and camellias in the autumn and winter. The large shrubs provided complete privacy because they were planted thirty years before by Ruth and Anne, the two sisters who owned Southern Roots Garden Shop and Nursery.

Ruth entered the employee garden while Ellis was eating the second half of her sandwich.

“Is the truck here?” Ellis asked.

“Not yet.” The white-haired woman limped to the other side of the bench and sat down. “I have some news. We have a buyer.”

Ellis set down the sandwich.

“Yeah, I know,” Ruth said.

“When would it change over?” Ellis asked.

“Not sure. But before it’s final, I’ll ask you once more: Are you sure you don’t want to find a partner and buy it?”

“I can’t. I think I’m going to buy that place out in the country. There’s no way I could afford both.”

“This is the place you looked at last Friday?”

Ellis nodded. “Twenty-eight acres with an old house and barn.”

“Sounds expensive.”

“The house is a shack and a fair portion is wetland.”

“And you still want to buy it?”

“It’s gorgeous. Huge live oaks, old pastures with wildflowers, and even a cattail marsh. You should see it.”

Ruth smiled.

“I’m hoping I can get the price down. The seller is the granddaughter of the former owners. She lives in LA, and she’s been trying to sell it for four years.”

“Be careful. A property that’s been on the market that long must have problems.”

“I know what the main problem is. The house is basically unlivable.”

Ruth looked alarmed. “And you’d still buy it?”

“I need somewhere to live. Both my roommates are finishing their doctorates and leaving soon. I don’t want to live in town anyway.”

“But where would you live if the house is that bad?”

“It’s livable enough for me. I’m used to camping.”

“Are you sure the house is worth fixing?”

“I’m going to bring Max out there after work today and see what she thinks.”