Shattered Loyalty, A New Beginning Blooms novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: The Pear Tree

I woke on a Saturday in April to the smell of something sweet coming through the window.

It wasn't bread.

It wasn't the street.

I lay for a moment in the grey light with Santino's arm heavy across my waist, trying to place it.

Then I remembered.

I slid out from under his arm and went to the window and looked down at the back lot.

The pear tree had bloomed in the night.

Every branch that had been bare and grey the day before was covered in white.

Thousands of small blossoms, five-petaled and soft, clustered so thick that the whole twisted tree looked like it was holding a cloud.

A breath of wind came through, and a few petals fell.

I put my hand over my mouth.

"What is it?" Santino murmured behind me.

"Come and see."

He came and stood at my shoulder, bare to the waist, with his hair mussed.

For a long time he said nothing.

"It's alive," he said finally.

"It was alive the whole time," I whispered. "It just needed somebody to clear the thorns."

We went down in our robes, barefoot, across the dew-wet dirt.

The back lot had changed in three weeks.

Santino had hauled out the junk and raked the soil.

Marta had planted a strip of herbs along the fence.

The old captain had hauled in a long wooden table from somewhere and left it against the wall without a word.

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