My Cousin Read The Will Beside Our Unfinished Seed Trays

Renata put her purse on the germination bench, right where I kept the clean labels.

"You need to clear out by Friday," she said.

I had a flat of young asters in my hands. Their roots were still fine as sewing thread. I set them down before I answered.

"Those plants won't be ready to move by Friday."

"Then leave them."

Outside, rain ticked against the propagation house. Beyond the wet glass, the fields south of Holland, Michigan, lay flat under an October sky. Aunt Celia had been buried three days earlier. Her coffee cup still stood beside the sink.

I was thirty-three, and I had worked as a greenhouse seed breeder since I finished school. I crossed parent plants, kept stray pollen out, and waited to see what came up. A good result could take six seasons. Renata thought six weeks was too long for anything.

I was a lean Mexican American man with brown skin, close-cut black curls, and a pale scar across my left eyebrow.

Celia used to say that scar looked like a plant label stuck in crooked. I had earned it under a bench at sixteen, trying to save a tray instead of my head.

Renata was a tall Mexican American woman with a sharp black bob, smooth brown skin, and square gold glasses.

She was thirty-nine. Her coat cost more than the heater repair I had been putting off. She stepped around a damp patch as if someone had laid it there to annoy her.

"I've had the will reviewed," she said. "The greenhouse business comes to me. So do its proceeds. You get the delivery cart."

She pointed through the glass.

The cart stood under the gutter, its sides red with rust. One wheel leaned. Celia had used it to carry seed flats before I was born.

"That was her choice?" I asked.

Renata pulled four stapled pages from her purse.

"Read it yourself."

The will left her Celia's house, bank accounts, equipment, and every interest in the propagation business. A short line left me the cart, identified by the number stamped on its frame.

There was Celia's name at the bottom. There were two witness names. There was a notary seal.

The date was June 18.

I read that date twice.

"Where's the original?"

"My attorney has it."

"Who's handling the estate?"

"I will be. My petition goes in tomorrow."

She said it as if filing a request and receiving an order were the same thing.

I reached for my work log. A pressed blue aster marked the last page I had checked with Celia. I made all my bookmarks from trial blooms, with thin paper sleeves and labels giving the cross and the date. Nothing pretty went into a book without a record.

"Still doing that?" Renata asked.

"It helps me find things."

"You could have run this place by now if you stopped saving every dead flower."

In January, Celia and I had signed papers at a lawyer's office. Afterward, she had made me repeat one sentence.

The walls and the work are separate things.

Her seed archive held the full set of papers. I had my signed acceptance at home. At the time, I had cared more about our spring trials than the lawyer's binder.

Now I wished I had read every tab twice.

"Don't touch the archive," I said.

Renata laughed once.

"You don't get to reserve rooms in my building."

"The cooperative owns the building. Celia leased it."

"Then I'll take over the lease. Either way, you are done here."

She showed me an email on her phone. She had offered the operation to a regional grower for $180,000. The buyer wanted the seed lines and their royalty income. Renata had written that she could deliver both by the end of the month.

"You've already offered it?"

"Somebody had to move. You were busy arranging flowers."

I looked at Celia's cup. There was a brown crescent inside it. I had washed every other cup after the funeral and left that one alone.

"I need a copy of the will."

"Keep those."

She laid a key on the bench.

"That's the cart lock. Your house key stays here when you leave."

I wanted to tell her what Celia had called the January papers. I wanted to name the seed lines, the license numbers, the checks they earned.

But knowing something existed was different from holding the signed pages. I had spent enough years counting seed to know the cost of guessing.

I took the cart key.

After she left, I went to the archive door. Its small brass lock was gone. A fresh silver padlock hung through the hasp.

My phone buzzed.

Renata had sent a photograph of the archive shelves and one short message.

Anything left Friday goes in the dumpster.