Chapter 5: Dirt Under the Nail

At dinner, the brown handprint was still on Daniel's knee.

Nobody said a word about it.

His father passed the salt with his eyes on the soup.

His grandmother looked at the handprint, then at Johnny's jaw, and took a long, slow sip of wine.

His mother seemed to have lost the ability to blink.

"Eat," Daniel said, to the whole table.

They ate.

Back in his room, he sat in front of the desk with the clay pot in his lap.

He had pulled it off the side table himself. It was the first thing he had picked up unprompted in five months.

The tomato was a pale green stalk with eight leaves. She had been facing the wall for two days.

"I'm turning you around," Daniel told her, stiffly. "It's not personal. He said you like the window."

He turned the pot and set it on the sill.

The soil in it was dry, so he took the little watering can from the shelf and poured.

A drop ran over the rim and onto his thumb, dark with earth.

He stared at it.

He counted one, two, three, and then did not wipe it.

"You're doing it again," Johnny said from the doorway.

Daniel jumped. "Doing what?"

"Thinking about wiping your thumb." Johnny came in, closed the door and leaned on it. "And you didn't."

"It's one thumb."

"It's one thumb." His whole face was lit. "Come here."

"I'm already here. I'm in a chair."

"Then I'll come to you."

Johnny crossed the room and dropped to a crouch in front of him.

He took Daniel's dirty thumb, lifted it, and kissed the pad of it.

"Tomorrow," Johnny said, "you can plant her properly."

"I'm not planting a tomato."

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