When your father dies, he makes you the sole inheritor of the estate. 

This does not surprise you. Your family has always been small—you were an only child, your mother’s dead with no siblings, and your father only with an estranged brother who hadn’t bothered to show up to the funeral.

What does surprise you is this: you are the only one he entrusts with his greenhouse.

You can’t quite fathom why—he should have known how awful you are at keeping plants alive. Though you had spent the better part of your childhood helping your father tend to it, it’s been years since you’ve last been inside the greenhouse. You moved out a while ago, and though you visited on occasion, your stay was never quite long enough to find time to help. With the greenhouse like his second child, for he had loved it almost as much as he loved you, it is an odd choice.

Still, you remember your standard attire. Though you’ve long since outgrown your own overalls, your father’s still hangs in his closest. They’re not hidden by any means, but they seem to be more tucked away than the rest of his clothing. The dark sage overalls are fairly clean, though the stale scent of moth balls cling to the fabric. 

You only have to roll the pants up once. You take a quick look in the mirror. For a second, you startle. You see your father in your place instead of you. You had always looked more like him—the same crooked half-smile, the dark of your eyes, the wiry frame—so it shouldn’t have caught you off guard. But it does. You linger for a moment before you make your way to the grand double doors that lead to the greenhouse. 

It takes quite a bit of effort to just open them. 

Your father always padlocked the greenhouse, out of a fear that you would hurt yourself or the plants without his supervision. It was understandable and inconsequential back then, since you were always a reckless and clumsy child and really had no need to enter it without your father. But now, you silently curse. You have no idea where your father put the key, and in this large and empty manor, it would take hours to comb through every single room.

You eye the padlock. 

It’s rusty. 

You look over your shoulder, then back towards the locked double doors. With one hard kick, you break the lock off the handles. A resounding crack echoes through the hallway and you push your way through the wooden double doors.

A sea of grays and browns greet you as you enter. The sweet stale scent of rot hits your nose. Dried leaves crunch underneath your boots. The stained glass window at the end of the room does not shed any color, the sun hidden behind the gloomy clouds. You walk further into the grand room and slowly turn in a circle. Everything in it seems dull and gray in comparison to your memories.

The flowers are mere wisps of plants. If you hadn’t been in the room before, you could have never been able to tell the remains of them apart. Roses, lilacs, sunflowers, tulips—their withered forms blend together into a tangled mass of dried out stalks and petals. 

And in the center of the room stands a lone apple tree.

A part of you is relieved it still stands. But as you get closer, it becomes evident that it isn’t as hale it looks.

The apples are rotten. Dented and bruised and already decaying before they’ve even been harvested, the apples sway as you move to sit underneath the lone tree. The grass around it is tinged the gray brown of dehydration and littered with fallen fruit. You wonder if your father ever had such trouble with them before. Certainly not when you were a child—memories of your father peeling away vibrant red skin, cutting it into perfectly shaped wedges, handing you a bowl overflowing, and biting into sweet and crisp slices are at the forefront of your mind. It was one of the many things you had missed, once you moved away. Your chest aches.

You barely have to reach to graze the low hanging fruit. Easily, you pluck one off the tree. It’s like mush in your hands, the flesh caving inwards with barely any pressure and its juices dripping into your palm and down your wrist. It pools there, sticky and saccharine with the smell of rot. 

You drop the apple. Grimace. Wipe the residue off onto your dirt covered overalls. Stand up. 

You close the door behind you, a numb, tingling sensation at your still apple sticky fingertips. 

—

A few weeks pass before you can bring yourself to enter the greenhouse again.

You were busy, you told yourself every time you passed by the double doors. You had to organize the papers in your dad’s office, or get groceries, or clean up your old room so you could sleep without the childhood fear of spiders rearing its head.

But eventually, you can’t put it off any longer. You itch to do something about the greenhouse and its almost lifeless state. 

This time, when you enter, you are armed with a broom and a rake and a bag and all the things you need to tidy the place up, even just a little bit. 

You start on the edges of the room. You take care of the cobwebs in the dark crevices, the filmy silk sticking to your fingertips as you swipe your hand through them. Sweep dried leaves off the paths and into a bag. Toss broken pieces of terracotta away. It’s tedious work, but it’s something you’re grateful for. It keeps your mind off of the dead plants that litter the places like gravestones in a cemetery. You aren’t quite sure what to do with them yet.

Then, there, in the corner, as you walk around the sides for anything that you might have missed, something catches your eye. A terracotta pot, big enough to need both arms to carry it.

You remember this one. It held one of the very first plants that you tried to care of yourself—little white flowers painted on the pot’s side with the kind of acrylic paint that easily scratches off—white rain lilies that you had pointed out in the plant nursery when you had gone with your father. He let you take it off the shelf, carry it to the counter, and handed you money to hand to the cashier with a wide grin. You were so excited. But only a week later, it died. That was when your father first began to teach you how to make up for your lack of a green thumb. He carefully taught you every little tip and trick he knew—which plants could be left alone, where to keep certain plants within the greenhouse, which plants were dramatic and needed more diligent care, when to schedule watering for maximum efficiency, and a whole laundry list of other small things that seem like instinct now. Those carefree days of sun soaked sweat and dirt caked fingernails and flourishing greenery seem so far away now, under the grime and grief that seems to have rooted itself within the greenhouse.

You laugh, a little wetly, as you dab at the tears in the corners of your eyes. The sad little green stalk, somehow more alive than anything else in the greenhouse, seems to—however impossible—perk up. 

You can’t believe he kept it after all this time. 

—

Over the next few months you do your best to restore the greenhouse to its former glory. 

You take care of the little things first. You replace the cracked pots with newer ones, have the windows fixed, get better shelves and tables.

Then comes the greater task. 

You haul bags of fertilizer and soil into the room, buy sachets of seeds to store in your father’s old apron, and replace the rusty tools in the greenhouse. Day by day, it begins to look more like the room you remember.  

You’ve never had the green thumb that your father did. Succulents seemed to be the only plants that you could take care of with any success. Still, you try. He taught you some tips, after all.

You open the first bag. The smell of fresh dirt fills the room. Pulling the first terracotta pot towards you, its acrylic white flowers freshly painted, you squat down and open the first packet of seeds.

You make a small divot in the soil with your thumb. Plant the seed. Cover it in dirt. Pat it down. Place the pot near the window. Water it. You repeat that process more times than you can count. Only the memory of your father’s steady hands guide you. 

By the time you are done, the sun kisses the horizon, a golden glow filtering in through the high windows and the stained glass. Sweat clings to your brow and your hairline, and with dirt-stained hands, you push away the strands of hair that tickle your cheeks. It’s been a while since you’ve exerted yourself to this degree. You let yourself fall backwards and lean against the trunk of the apple tree. You lay there for just a moment. 

For now, the apple tree stands. Perhaps you’ll plant another one, or maybe something new entirely—you haven’t quite decided yet—but you run your hand down the sturdy bark and think of the possibilities. 

When you have caught your breath, you stand up to admire your work.

An array of terracotta pots line the greenhouse, each one with a fresh heaping of soil and fertilizer and ready to hold new life. The stained glass casts a patch of iridescence on the cobble paths. You can’t help the grin that grows on your face.  

You’re sure you’ve forgotten some step in the process of planting—perhaps the roses need more water or the orchids want less sun or a hundred other things that your father would have known and done—but you can’t quite find it in you to care.

It won’t be the garden you remember. 

But it doesn’t have to be.

Edited by Annika Lee

Artist Statement: This piece is very very loosely inspired on my own backyard—my family used to grow apples, calamansi, dragonfruit, and a whole host of other fruits. I remember when I was younger, just being able to go outside, pick them, and eat it. However, as the years went by, we’ve had to cut down the apple tree, and the other plants don’t quite grow fruit anymore and replace them with other plants.