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“Morning, you two.” Better to act like nothing’s wrong, right? What else can I do? I’ve got skills to teach here. “We’re looking at a diseased plant today. Gonna see if either of you can figure out the disease, and brainstorm ways to treat it.”
“Like House,” Jeremiah says, trailing after me down the winding stone path. Near our feet, something scurries back under cover of the foliage. A critter or a tiny bird, camouflaged to blend in with the dirt.
“Exactly like House.” Sweeping a vine out of the way with my forearm, I wave them both off-path into the tangle. “And I’m the cranky asshole with the limp.”
“You don’t have a limp.” Jeremiah’s voice carries back through the leaves, always so confident. When I follow them both, the temperature drops a little in the shade.
“And you’re n-not an asshole,” Eden murmurs, so quiet I nearly miss it.
Their boots scuff away, and I stand frozen for three whole heartbeats. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.
Did she—?
Was that—?
Am I hearing things now? Has talking to plants more than people finally taken its toll?
“Kai,” Jeremiah calls. “Which plant is it?”
Right. Yeah. I’ve got a job to do—never mind the pretty undergrad frazzling my nerves.
The sickly orchid is in the under-story, tucked away from any bright rays of sunshine. We all squat around it, squinting at the splotchy leaves in the gloom.
“Mealy bugs,” Jeremiah guesses.
“No.”
“Rhizoctonia.”
“No. Eden?” I turn my head, my voice gentling. “Want to guess?”
She inhales sharply, pressing her lips together. And god, the way she looks at me—the way her eyes widen, beseeching, like she wants me to understand—it wrecks me.
Eden’s eyes are the same shade of gray as a hazy morning out at sea, bobbing on my surfboard in the mist. One of those days where the ocean and the sky blurs together, all pale, shifting light, and swimming feels one breath away from flying.
She jerks her head back and forth, ponytail swishing.
I sigh.
“Look here.” On either side of me, they both lean closer, obediently looking at where I point. The orchid’s stem has turned black near the soil, the stain disappearing into the leaf litter, and oily dark splotches have spread across its leaves. “See those lesions? They’re like bruises. Now, what type of plant is this? Don’t worry about specifics. Which family?”
“An orchid,” Jeremiah says immediately, though Eden’s lips move silently too. She knows, she just won’t—or can’t—say.
“And what causes those lesions in orchids?”
Jeremiah rocks back on his heels, nearly toppling back into the undergrowth. He doesn’t care—he’s solved the riddle. “Black rot!”
“Correct.”
Beside me, Eden is silent, chewing on her lip. My knees ache from crouching for so long.
“There’s might be a drainage issue around the roots. First, though, we’re going to dig the plant up and check its neighbors. The last thing we need is fungus spreading through the greenhouse orchids, right?”
Two heads bob along in agreement. Jeremiah’s chattering away—listing every factoid he knows about orchids and black rot—while Eden shifts forwards onto her knees, prodding gently at the soil with a trowel. This is standard for these two: Jeremiah does the talking, acting like a TV presenter on some nature documentary, while Eden quietly does the actual work.
“Wait a second, Eden.”
She pauses, looking at me with those big, mist-gray eyes.
