Not grandmother and grandson; that would claim too much.

But something in that country.

He never told me what he’d done to end up there and I never asked, because Sal had taught me by example that a person is not their worst afternoon, and because I could see the thing that mattered more, which was that Darnell had hands.

Real hands, patient and clever, that understood a plant the way I never would, that could coax a struggling seedling back from the edge by some feel he couldn’t have explained.

Nobody had ever told him he was good at anything, I don’t think.