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I shake my head. Not that my old boss, Richard, doesn’t deserve such a flaky employee.

“You know, you could come down here and help us,” Mom calls. “We’ve got a bucket of seed packets that need planting.”

“Busy,” she says.

“Doing what? Spying and being judgmental?” I call.

“Reading.” She reaches into her lap and holds up a book.

I glimpse the title. Classic Fairy Tales for the Young and Old.

Turning back to the soil, I busy myself with pulling out weeds. No making eye contact. Act uninterested. “Oh yeah? What fairy tale are you reading?” I ask, affecting my most bored voice.

Surprisingly, she answers right away. “‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ The wolf just ate the grandma, and now he’s dressed in her clothing.” Wrenley lets out a cackle and doubles over, teetering on the branch. “Look at this picture. It’s ridiculous.”

I look at the picture. And the next one she shows me, of a house made completely of candy. And the next, of a woman in a glass coffin.

“Snow White,” Wrenley reads aloud.

“Is that the one where she pricks her finger on a spinning wheel?” I ask innocently.

“No,” Wrenley shoots back. “That’s ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ ‘Snow White’ is the one with the wicked stepmother and the seven dwarves.”

“Oh, I don’t know that one,” Mom says, never looking up.

“I don’t either,” I say.

Wrenley gives an exasperated sigh and leaps down from the tree, then leans her back against the trunk. “I’ve already read this book three times. I’ll tell you how it goes.”

And she does. The next day, she reads us “Sleeping Beauty,” because Mom and I have never read that one either. And coincidentally, we’ve both never heard of “Rumpelstiltskin” or “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”

Wrenley reads them all out loud, even doing the voices. I notice Ezryn stops his hammering on the siding of the cottage, his ear turned toward us. Farron brings us tall glasses of water but lingers to listen. Dayton’s on a new baking kick, and we get cupcakes and scones that Wrenley eats while still reading, her mouth full, crumbs flying. I tell Dayton they’re as good as Marigold’s, and that invisible bone aches a little less.

We never see Kel during the day, so he doesn’t come for stories, but at night, Caspian recites the tales he’s listened to, and Wrenley jumps in to correct him when he gets a point wrong. She’s practically memorized each one.

It’s late summer when we near the end of the book. “This is my favorite one,” Wrenley whispers, almost reverently. She’s sitting in the dirt between Mom and I now because “It just won’t do if you can’t see the pictures.”

Our yard is bursting with vegetables. Green lettuce, purple radishes, hefty turnips. Everything has grown. Everything except my carrots.

“What’s the title?” Mom asks.

“‘Jack and the Beanstalk,’” Wrenley breathes.

“Why’s that one your favorite?” I ask.

Wrenley looks up, her brilliant blue eyes shining in the sunlight.

I take the moment to look at her. To drink her in, like a glass of water when I’ve been lost in the desert.

I didn’t think I could live without you, Papa. But I don’t have to. You’re in Wrenley’s stubbornness and Mom’s memory and the boards of our house and the soil of our yard. You’re with me, always.

Wrenley’s hand slowly rises, as if she could caress the sky. “Imagine what it would be like. To find a way to climb all the way to the heavens. To leave this world behind.”

I touch her shoulder. She doesn’t pull away. “I can’t wait to hear it.”

And when she finishes the tale and puts the book down, Mom says nothing. She just hands her something.

A packet of seeds. Green beans.