SIXTEEN

“The police convinced Victor not to press charges,” Dad tells my mom. His voice is calm now, not like when the police brought me home last night. “Chloë’s young and didn’t mean any harm, so the courts probably wouldn’t bother with it anyway.”

It’s evening in Montreal, and Mom’s still at the office. She’s sitting in her desk chair, this horrified look on her face. “What were you thinking, Chloë? I thought we raised you better than this!”

I stare at her. “This has nothing to do with how you raised me! I wanted to—”

“I don’t care what you wanted to do, Chloë! You were trespassing! And stealing! There’s never any excuse for that.”

“But—”

“I can’t believe this.” She squeezes her eyes shut. I don’t think she’s crying, but she looks wounded, which almost feels worse, like she can never trust me again. “Chloë, all this sneaking around may seem like fun to you, but—”

“You think I did this for fun?” My voice is too loud, but I don’t care. I push myself up from the sofa. Dad grabs my arm, but I wrench my hand free and stomp off to my bedroom, the only place left for me to go.

Please pick up. Phoning to apologize.

I blink at Mom’s text. It’s breakfast time, almost noon in Montreal. But that’s not why I’m surprised. Mom apologizing? Now there’s a first. I turn the ringer back on. The next time it sounds, I pick up.

“I talked to your Dad,” she says. “And to Sofia.”

“I know. She texted me.” She sent a photo of the For Sale sign in front of our house too.

“She told me more about Uli’s garden,” Mom says. “I didn’t know you cared so much about the plants.”

“Yeah, you made that pretty clear.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry for a lot of things. You know I didn’t set out for everything to happen this way, right?”

I don’t answer. I’m looking through my tiny bedroom window to the bush planted in front of it. My bedroom at home looked onto our balcony and down to Sofia’s backyard. I wonder what the bedroom in Mom’s new condo is like, but I don’t wonder enough to actually want to stay there.

It’s Mom who finally breaks the silence. “Thanks for answering the phone. I’ll talk to you soon. And hold on to that Sofia. She’s a keeper.”

Only Nikko bangs on our apartment door like that, not a crisp rat-tat-tat like Estelle, but a full-bodied bam-bam-bam, as if the door is in the way of sharing the best news on the planet.

“Nice shirt,” I say. It’s gray with a sprouting seed on the front. “Where’d you get it?”

“A friend made it. But I designed it. We made one for you too,” he calls back over his shoulder because he’s already halfway down the hall. “Can you come out the front? I have something to show you.”

I follow him to the lobby and through the front door. Across the street a crowd has formed. They’re shouting something I can’t make out, but it’s happy shouting. At least forty people are gathered in front of the chain-link fence. They’ve got cardboard signs saying things like Seeds Are Our Future and Save Our Vegetables! and even Save the Bees! Cars are slowing as they pass. Someone shows up with a TV camera.

“Who are all these guys?” I ask Nikko.

“People who don’t want Victor to turf the seed collection,” he says. “Gardeners, Quakers, soup-kitchen people, homeschooling friends. Choose your battle, Uli said. This seemed like a good one.”

Without thinking, I hug him. He staggers back, his face turning red. Dad saves us the trouble of figuring out what to say next. He shows up behind me with two pieces of cardboard in hand. “Shall we join them, Chloë?”

“You have signs too?” I ask. “You knew about this?”

“Nikko might have mentioned it.”

“But Victor—”

“We’ll stand on this side of the street.” Dad hands me a sign, and we cross the lawn to our corner. From there I can see that Slater is out on his lawn too, watching everyone and smiling. Okay, it’s more of a smirk, and he’s probably thinking we’re all a bunch of losers, but he’s not making anyone’s life miserable at the moment, for a change.

The camera guy pans the crowd of protesters. A few minutes later a woman with glossy black hair and perfect makeup interviews Nikko and then me. I talk about kale that can grow as tall as me, the blue squashes Uli loved, white turnips that are pink inside, purple beans, and the people who gave Uli the seeds in the first place. “If my grandfather had had a dying wish,” I say, “it would have been to save those seeds for future generations.”

The woman smiles and puts the microphone away. “Thanks. That was great.” She hands me her card. “By the way, have you heard about the seed library?”

“Seed library?” I ask.

“It launched last spring. I did a story on it, and I follow them now on Twitter.” She explains how anyone with a public library card can borrow seeds to grow in their own gardens. When those plants go to seed, people harvest, dry and return the new seeds to the library for the next season. “They accept donations too. Someone left them a huge collection a few months ago, and people are all excited about it. It includes some really rare seeds, I guess.”

Nikko scribbles in his notebook. “Any idea who the donor was?”

“No,” she says. “I’m sure you could find out though.”

“I’ll do that.” Nikko catches my eye, and I stifle a laugh because I know we don’t need to try to find out who it was.

Now I know why I couldn’t find the seed collection. Turns out, Uli did have a plan after all. All these weeks while I was watering, trespassing and guerilla gardening—becoming a much bolder person than I’ve ever been before—the library was preparing his collection for the whole city to use.

I made a promise to the people who gave me the seeds, Uli said. Darned if I’ll go back on it now.

When Dad told Uli not to garden this year, my grandfather answered with his best poker face. He even managed to look a bit offended. But I see now that he was bluffing. He’d already looked after the future of the seed collection. What he didn’t want to give up on was me. And our family. Asking me to garden with him was his last-ditch attempt to repair everything that had fallen apart since he’d planted the garden in the first place, the year my grandmother died.

Even though I’d thought he was a little bit crazy, I’d agreed to it, because I’d left my whole life in Montreal, and I had nothing to lose. I had no idea then that by digging in the dirt, I’d get the stories of my great-grandmother’s tree and my grandmother’s sailboat and why Dad had left this place and why he wanted to come back. But most of all, I’d get to know my grandfather.

“What do you think was in the red box then?” I ask Nikko when the reporter has gone back to her car.

“Who knows?” He moves his head in the direction of the crowd across the street. “Do you think we should tell them to stop protesting? That the lost collection has been found?”

“Nah,” I say. “I bet Uli’s enjoying watching this, wherever he is.”

“Digging into his big bowl of chocolate ice cream in the sky.”