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Chapter Thirty
Sable had woken up comfortable and snuggly but embarrassed. Only children cried themselves to sleep. But Jethro hadn’t seemed to mind.
No, after she woke up, he went and made some new sandwiches and reheated the tomato soup while she saved her documents and sent what she’d gotten done to the relevant parties.
Made her feel kind of queasy to do it, but there had been truth in Jethro’s words from earlier. As much as she wished it, she wasn’t a robot and she deserved to be treated like a human being who occasionally had needs. Gross.
After he’d fed her little squares of grilled cheese dipped in soup with a side of ants-on-a-log—she’d never known celery could taste good—he took her upstairs and got her changed into some of his clothes. She looked and felt silly, but when he’d asked her if she had anything she wouldn’t mind getting dirty, she hadn’t known what to say.
So now she was walking over to the greenhouse in a pair of enormous sweats and a thermal shirt under a hoodie that hit her mid-thigh while holding her daddy’s hand and the doggies lumbered after them.
It was warm inside, and she wandered around looking at all the pretty plants. She didn’t have anything alive in her apartment. Even the plants at her office were fake. Everything here just seemed more comfortable, like she could breathe.
“Did you grow all these?” she asked, rubbing a leaf that looked fuzzy between her fingers. She was delighted when it felt fuzzy too. So soft she wanted to rub it against her face, but she supposed that’s what Tundra was for.
The snow leopard had been sitting against the pillows on their big bed this morning, like it made perfect sense for a grown woman to sleep with a stuffie at night.
Jethro came up behind her and wrapped his big arms around her. “A lot of them, yes. That’s lamb’s ear. Do you like it?”
“Yes, Daddy,” she said shyly. It wasn’t the flashiest plant in the greenhouse by far, but it was pretty and sweet and she liked the feel of it in between her fingers.
“Let’s bring that one in the house for you when we’re done.”
“No,” she protested.
“How come? If it makes you happy?”
“I’ll kill it.”
She knew Jethro hadn’t meant to make her sound incompetent when he said she wasn’t very good at taking care of herself, but he was right. How was she supposed to take care of anything else? She’d killed every plant she’d ever had.
“Baby, you live with a man who grows things for a living. I won’t let you kill it. You’ll be responsible for taking care of it, but I’ll make sure you know how. Promise.”
“’Kay,” she acquiesced, still feeling like she was going to do it wrong, but trusting Jethro to not let her fuck it up beyond repair. And if she did—her stomach lurched, but she repeated it in her head: he’d still love her.
“Go on, then. Pick it up, and we’ll bring it over to where you’re going to help me.”
She cradled the plant in her good arm and followed Jethro to a long bench set in front of a counter. There were some giant bags of dirt, a bunch of seeds, and some tiny little pots there.
“Are you going to name it?” he asked, and it took her a second to realize he was talking about the lamb’s ear that she was still holding.
Was he mocking her? Or was this something plant people did and she didn’t know because she was decidedly not a plant person. Or hadn’t been, anyway.
“Do you name your plants?”
“You know that enormous spider plant that’s going to consume my living room?”
She nodded because yes she had noticed the plant that seemed to have a million arms and snaked along the ceiling and down corners and around windows.
“His name’s Charlie.”
“Okay. Then…” Sable studied her new plant. It was definitely a she. And while she was kind of green, she was more of a silver color. “Her name is Luna. Like the moon.”
“That’s perfect. I’m sure Charlie will be very pleased to make her acquaintance. For now, let’s set her down out of the way so she doesn’t get knocked over, get that hoodie off you because it’s toasty in here, and then it’s time for some fun.”
So she wasn’t exactly an expert, but the stuff on the counter didn’t look like fun. It looked dirty and like work. She shot Jethro a look to let him know she thought so.
“Some plants you can drop the seeds in the ground in the spring and they grow just fine. Others you have to start a lot earlier in the year in a greenhouse to keep them warm and then move them outside when they’re ready. Today we’re going to start some of the ones that need a lot of time to grow.”
