“It usually does.”
Daphne capped her water. “What does drip line involve?”
“Small hoses. Small holes. Big mess if someone fixes them wrong.”
“That sounds official.”
“It’s around here.”
“I knew irrigation had a rulebook.”
Birdie smiled. “Everything has a rulebook if you ask the city.”
Daphne laughed again, easier this time. She pulled on her gloves from the shelf, flexed her fingers, and followed me out into the sun.
The south row ran closest to my fence line. Past the raised beds and the strip of scrub grass, my land started in pines and slope. Beargrass Lake sat beyond it, out of sight from this angle but not out of mind.
Daphne looked that way once.
Only once.
Then she knelt beside the bed like she’d decided to keep both knees and every thought pointed at the work.
I set the tubing crate between us and crouched. “This section isn’t watering evenly. We’re checking for clogs and bad caps.”
“Are they always this tight?”
“Most of them.”
“Useful warning after this morning.”
I handed her a connector. “This piece joins two lines. Push it in straight. If you twist too hard, it cracks.”
Daphne studied the little plastic piece in her gloved palm. “This stuff is fussier than it looks.”
“It’s cheap.”
“That explains so much.”
I caught one end of the tubing and showed her the split near the seam. “This is the part we’re replacing.”
She leaned closer. Sun slid along the curve of her shoulder. A loose brown wave fell against her cheek, and she blew it away without touching it.
My hand paused on the tubing.
Daphne’s eyes flicked to mine.
The garden kept working around us. Birdie clipped peppers. Tyler made a dramatic gagging sound near the compost, and Gus said, “Compost’s already had enough trouble.” A truck rolled by on the road outside the gate.
Daphne looked back at the line first.
I pushed the connector into place and handed her the other end. “Your turn.”
She braced the tubing in both hands. “Straight in. No twisting. Don’t crack the pipe.”
“That’s the whole lesson.”
She pushed. The connector slipped halfway in and stopped.
