March came in with the water open, the whole lake standing wide and blue in the long light, the ice gone the way ice goes at the lake — not defeated, just finished, its work done for the season. The dock stood out into the open water where Benjamin had helped him set it, the garden's first earth showing dark and ready along the south wall, and the rose, true to every word the nurseryman had ever spoken, put out its first leaves the second week of the month, small and certain against the warming brick.
Aaron worked the ground the week the frost left it — the peas going in first, the way they had gone in the year before, then the tomatoes in their cages, the whole garden taking shape the way it had taken shape when it had first taught him what it was for. But this year he did one more thing.
He planted a tree.
