The plant came home with me and sat quietly on the windowsill of my apartment. Life moved on. I watered it. Sometimes I forgot. I resented it a little, truth be told. My siblings flashed their new treasures while I dusted the leaves of something stubborn and ordinary.
Years later, on moving day, it was the last thing left in the room. Tired and annoyed, I decided not to drag one more box to the car. Instead, I knocked on my neighbor Carla’s door.
She grinned and took it like I’d just gifted her a puppy.
The Key in the Soil
That night, my phone nearly leapt off the table with her urgent call.
“Get over here. Now.”
Carla’s voice was sharp with excitement. Breathless, I hurried across the hall and found her standing in her kitchen, my grandmother’s plant on the counter. In her hand was a tiny rusted key wrapped in an old handkerchief, my name stitched into the corner with crooked blue thread.
“I found it in the soil,” she whispered, still wide-eyed.
In that instant, my chest filled with something hard to describe — half disbelief, half a sudden weight of understanding. Grandma hadn’t just given me a plant. She had given me a puzzle.
