April came in green, the lake holding the sky in its deepest blue of the year, the garden standing in its rows the way it had stood the spring before — the peas hooked and climbing, the tomatoes staking their cages, the rose full in leaf against the warm brick — and the young oak, true to its kind, put out its first leaves the second week of the month, small and bright at the ends of its bare branches, holding them up to the morning light like a thing presenting its work.
Aaron stood over it with his coffee and said nothing, the way you say nothing to a thing that is keeping the long end of a promise, and Sophie came out and stood beside him.
"It leafed," she said.
"It leafed," Aaron said. "Daisy said she'd come back when it had leaves."
"The tree's keeping the promise," Sophie said. "Now it's the tree's turn to hold the door open."
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