Claimed by My Ex-Husband novel · Chapter 24 of 48
Chapter 24: The Lemon Tree
On Sunday morning we planted a second lemon tree.
Angelo bought it from a nursery on Mission Street, a thin sapling in a bucket, with three leaves and a tag.
He dug the hole himself, in old jeans, with dirt up to the elbow and the sun in his hair.
I knelt on a folded towel because of my ankle and held the trunk straight.
"Deeper," I said.
"It's deep enough."
"The tag says deeper."
"The tag is wrong."
"Angelo."
He dug deeper.
When the roots were in, we packed the soil around them with our hands, and our fingers kept meeting in the dark earth.
Neither of us said who the tree was for.
I didn't have to.
He wiped his palm on his jeans and put it flat over mine on the trunk.
"The twenty-ninth of March," he said. "We'll sit under it."
"We'll bring something to eat."
"We'll bring the tinola."
"You can't cook tinola."
"I'll learn."
That night Dessa came for dinner with Tomas, who had forty-three days and a coin to prove it.
He set the coin on the table next to his fork.
Angelo cooked adobo.
He had been cooking it every night for a week, from her mother's recipe on the back of an envelope, and he stood at the end of the table as she took the first bite.
Dessa chewed.
She chewed for a long time.
"Edible," she said.
Angelo closed his eyes.
"That is the nicest thing she has ever said to anyone," Tomas whispered to me.
"I heard that."
"It's true."
"I'm going to take your pulse."
Over dessert, Angelo put a flat leather folder next to my plate, the same one from the hall table.
I opened it.
The two old boarding passes were still inside, creased at the folds.
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