The storm had wrung the town out like a soaked shirt and then flung it over the low hills to drip. Sidewalks shone. The track behind North Harbor High glimmered under the stadium lights, each puddle a small silver coin pressed into the red rubber. Somewhere down by the marsh, the frogs had started their fiddling again, tentative as if they were testing whether the world had kept its shape. Rowan stood with his backpack slung one-shouldered, watching his breath mist the air. The wind had a salt edge to it, even this far inland. It threaded through the chain-link fence and tugged at the paper in his pocket with a careful, teasing hand. He had not taken his eyes off that paper since it appeared, folded once, tucked inside his locker like it had always belonged there. No name on the front. No stamp of official anything. Just the thinnest slice of blue-lined notebook, the kind he and June used to rip from spiral-bound pads when they were both too impatient to find scissors. He had known the handwriting before he finished unfolding it. The way the capital W leaned forward as if it were about to run. The shy loop on the R. The final period pressed like a thumbprint. Water the carnations. 7:10. He had stared at those three words until they blurred. In the hallway glare, kids surged and part, and voices floated past, and the bell rang, and he still stood there with June's letters in his hands like a taste he remembered but couldn't quite name. By the time his last class broke up into the damp evening, the numbers had slid toward the edge of the hour. The sky was the colour of dredged-up oysters. He'd texted Kira because the alternative was standing alone in the greenhouse with his pulse ricocheting off the glass. He pressed the note flat with his palms, as if he could iron the time back into it. "Let me see again," Kira said now, stepping closer so the stadium lights spilled down her sleeve. Her hair was still wet from practice, curling away from her face like question marks. She smelled faintly of rain and that almond lotion she carried in her track bag. Her nails were painted the precise green of new leaves. He handed her the paper. The letters looked exactly as they had when June used to label plant trays in the kitchen windowsill or scrawl a grocery list on the back of a receipt she'd found in her pocket. Rowan could feel the kitchen sunlight on his forearms and hear the sound of their mother's kettle, the way it sighed once before it sang. He swallowed. "It's her handwriting." Kira's eyes flicked up to his. She didn't say Are you sure? She didn't say How would that be possible? She knew better than to stand in his grief and tidy it like a room that needed cleaning. "Do you remember the carnations?" she asked instead. Rowan nodded. The memory pressed itself forward. June at the garden shop in April, pushing a wheeled cart with reckless elegance, making a game out of not knocking into anyone. "They look like ruffles," she'd said, fanning the flowers at him. "Like the edges of fancy napkins at weddings." She had planted them in orange clay pots and lined them on the back steps, where the cat used them as a jungle. June watered them every evening at 7:10 because that was when the sun slipped behind the neighbour's garage and left the steps in shade. "Timing is a kind of kindness," she'd said, tapping the watch face she had drawn in ballpoint on her wrist. The last time Rowan had been to the greenhouse, really been there, he and June had argued in the aisle between the succulents and the herbs. A nothing of an argument that had learned to breathe, grown bones, outlasted the leaves. By June, she was gone, not the dramatic disappearing act people in movies attempted but a leaving that was enacted quietly over weeks: a box, a bag, a last hug that landed somewhere outside his ribs because he refused to open them. He couldn't think about that or he would crumble. He folded the memory back up like a sweater he wasn't sure he should wear in public. The hill to the greenhouse rose beyond the track, beyond the row of maple trees that had shed their brightness in bursts of red and gold. Up there, the glass structure hunched against the wind: a collection of panes and frames, each one mended with the kind of care that leaves its scars visible. Inside, things thrived despite the season. The horticulture club held meetings on Wednesdays. Mr. Avetis, who claimed he could talk a drooping fern back into courage, kept the place open late in spring. Tonight, the lights were on. A pale gleam shone through fogged windows, making the whole building look like a lung. "Rowan," Kira said softly, toeing a puddle with her sneaker so its edges rippled. "We don't have to go if you don't want to." He did and he didn't. Both feelings crowded his chest, elbowing for space. "It could be-" He stopped. He hadn't said June's name out loud in weeks. It felt both fragile and heavy in his mouth. "It looks like her writing." "It does," Kira agreed. She handed the note back. "And if it's a prank, it's a bad one. Too specific." Rowan slid the paper into his pocket and put his hand over it, as if it were a small animal he was keeping warm. "We'll just look," he said. "If it's nothing, it's nothing." They started up the hill. Wet leaves clung to their shoes. The wind had shifted, coming from the river now, braided with the faint metallic smell of the storm's retreat. Their school looked smaller from this angle. You could see the whole curtain of windows on the second floor and, in one of them, a custodian moving a yellow mop bucket like a slow comet. As they reached the top, Rowan noticed the greenhouse door had been propped with a black rubber wedge. That was what Mr. Avetis did when he was inside: practical, expected. Yet the path lights weren't on, and there was no radio playing the old Armenian pop he liked. Outside, the cement bench was wet with rain, opals of water cupped in the chipped spots. "Someone's there," Kira murmured, frowning at the propped door. Rowan's pulse drummed in his ears. The windows breathed out a soft heat, fog feathering the glass. He pushed the door gently. It swung open into a rush of humidity. The air tasted like green things and soil, like something had been growing so vigorously it left its scent on your tongue. They stepped in, the door whispering shut behind them with a sound like a page turned carefully. The greenhouse was a geography all its own. On the left, the succulents held their careful water. On the right, the herbs brushed against each other and released a thousand small opinions: basil sharp as a pencil, rosemary like a hillside under sun, mint light and insistently sweet. Farther in, taller plants made aisles that felt like quiet streets. A misting system clicked and hissed, and a thin line of water ribboned down a panel of glass and caught the light. Rowan looked for carnations. His eyes needed a second to adjust. He and June had grown them in clay pots, so he followed the memory to the centre table where the bigger, heavier pots were kept. Orange earth. Damp rims darkened by water. Labels written in black marker that had bled a little onto the plastic. The first pot he checked was rosemary. Then thyme. Then geranium, the leaves smelling like squeezed pennies and old perfume. He shifted a pot aside with both hands, leaving a print in the condensation, and there-three clay pots, lined like sentries. Carnations, pale as wax in this light, each ruffled head catching a bead of water and holding it. Something was stuck into the soil of the middle pot, not a plant tag, but another scrap of paper, the edge curling where the damp had kissed it. "You see that?" Kira whispered behind him, although there was no one to disturb. Rowan's fingers felt clumsy. He pinched the paper and drew it out. The ink had feathered the smallest amount, but the handwriting was the same. June's shy-looping R. The urgent W. Only two words this time. You're late. He glanced at the clock above the potting bench. 7:12, its red second hand sweeping an endless circle. Kira leaned closer, her shoulder barely touching his. "Rowan." It wasn't a warning or a question; it was a way of saying I'm here. The misting system sighed again, and somewhere a heater hummed alive. A single moth pressed itself against the glass where a tear in the shade cloth let a sliver of night look in. Overhead, raindrops ticked away their last on the roof. The sound was soft, but in the hush of so much growing, it felt loud. A sensation slid down Rowan's spine, a blend of awe and dread, the way he had felt as a kid when he held his breath, ducked underwater, and the pool kept on going deeper than he expected. June had always been the one to dive first and come up laughing. He rubbed his thumb over the damp paper. He wanted to be angry. He wanted to feel nothing. He wanted-he didn't even know what he wanted. "Is Mr. Avetis here?" Kira asked, but even as she said it, they both knew she would have called out if she believed he was. The greenhouse felt like a church feels when you go on a weekday afternoon: all the space, none of the people, just the bones of the place holding their breath. Rowan set the note back in the carnation pot, as if returning a book to its shelf. The flower heads trembled, dropping a tiny star of water onto the soil. His hands were shaking, too, but he pretended it was from the difference in temperature between outside and here. "June," he said, trying the name out, hearing how it landed. It floated up into the rafters like a small, startled bird. Something moved in the corridor that led to the propagation room-just the faintest shift, the suggestion of weight changing, a shadow deciding to be more than just a smudge. Kira stiffened beside him. Rowan felt his heartbeat climb his throat and curl, waiting. He took one step towards the corridor. Then another. Plants brushed his jeans, left darker kisses on the denim. The hum of the heater thinned and held. He could hear, beyond the glass, a car shifting gears on the hill, someone's dog yelping once, distant laughter carried sideways by the wind. Inside, only the sound of water thinking about falling. The light at the far end of the corridor clicked and steadied. He could see the edge of the propagation table now, the trays of damp soil, the clear plastic domes beaded with condensation like nests of pearls. He swallowed. "If this is a joke-" he began, and his voice wasn't the voice he used in class or the kitchen. It was the one that had spoken to June from across a thousand small distances. "Ro?" The voice came from the end of the corridor, soft and hoarse around the edges. The nickname only three people ever used. The sound of it untied something inside him and let a flood rush in-fear, hope, anger, the ache that never had a good place to sit. He froze, hand hovering above the edge of the table, breath snagged like a sleeve on a nail. "Ro," the voice said again, closer now, as a shape leaned out of the shadow and the glass beside him fogged with a warm, human exhale. Rowan didn't move.