Poppy Learns Tessa Lives

The greenhouse is warm, overgrown, and private in a way the rest of Hart House has never been. Tessa used to keep orchids, basil, and terrible secrets here. Now Poppy sits on the potting bench in the old apron with her knees drawn up and the expression of a child trying to decide whether hope is just another trick adults play.

Tessa enters through the side door and stops three feet inside, as if any closer without permission would be theft. The silence between them is almost visible. Then Poppy says, "You look like me around the eyes."

Tessa laughs and cries in the same breath. "You got the good parts."

Poppy does not smile. "Did you leave me?"

No lawyer could survive that question. No mother should have to. Tessa kneels on the stone floor. "I was kept away some of the time, and the rest of the time I was afraid coming back badly would break you worse."

"That's not the same as no."

"No," Tessa says. "It's not."

I stay silent in the corner because this is not a scene I get to narrate into something easier. Poppy swings her feet once, twice. "Dad says staying counts more than truth."

"Your dad says whatever makes the room forgive him," Tessa answers quietly.

Poppy looks at me then, asking without words whether that is fair. I nod because fairness is late, but honesty can still make the appointment. She turns back to Tessa. "I don't know how to love people who keep changing the story."

Tessa swallows hard. "Try starting with the parts that stay the same."

"Like what?"

"Like I came."

Poppy thinks about that. Finally she slides off the bench and stands close enough for the two of them to share breath, not touch. "Okay," she says. "But if you leave again, I get to hate you for real."

"Deal," Tessa whispers.

It is the nearest thing to reconciliation any of us deserve right now. It lasts forty seconds before Nico calls from outside with new news. Curtis Bell's car was spotted near the Mercer greenhouse an hour earlier. We were not the only people expecting this meeting.