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Hart would’ve said he loved every single thing about planting flowers, if the outside variables weren’t so unpredictable. He could have a perfectly sown seed, but the pH balance in the soil would be wrong for it. Or he could have a good bloom going, only for the weather to take a turn, and relentless days of storms would make the whole harvest a wash. Sometimes winter’s frost snuck back after the thaw, and his freshly planted flowers died in the ground before they had a chance to grow. Sometimes every element would be right, and the flower just plumb refused to grow.

That wasn’t ever a problem in the Wish Garden. Didn’t matter if they were heat-loving or shade dwellers, tropical, hardy annuals, or perennials. Through snow or mud, you could plant anything you wanted in there, and a hundred different varieties would bloom year-round. Fireworks of chrysanthemums next to feathery breadseed poppies. Prairie smoke flowers that could’ve been characters in a Dr. Seuss book intertwined with ranunculus that swirled like cupcake frosting.

Hart had long ago come to accept that the Wish Garden was full to bursting with the incomprehensible. But as he looked down now at the spot where he’d planted his wish, seeing nothing but a square inch of fresh soil, he found the one thing in this place that he needed an explanation for.

He spent a few days doing nothing but sitting in the garden, racking his brain about the wish-making process. Not the rules, exactly, but the mechanics of it. Here was what he knew:

It didn’t matter what kind of seed you used. You could plant a weed, or a watermelon, or a tree. The size of the crop didn’t yield a more or less bountiful result.

If it was a small wish, it’d be granted almost immediately, and the seedling would sprout like in a sped-up time-lapse video. If it was something bigger, it could take a day for it to come true, and for the seedling to break through the soil. But it never took longer than that. If it didn’t happen in twenty-four hours, then the wish hadn’t worked.

If you followed the rules, the wish always worked.

Which was why Hart couldn’t wrap his head around this. He didn’t know what the problem was, and if he didn’t know that, he had no idea how to go about fixing it. After a few days of meditating on it, he decided that maybe what the garden needed was some tidying up. He pruned flowers that had dried and browned. He spent a week tending to the garden, bringing it back to what he hoped was health. Making it neat enough to walk through so that not a single leaf got accidentally trampled. Tilling the soil to break up clumps and recalibrate its consistency to give roots more space to stretch. Covering the plants and dirt with a light shower from his watering can. Hart did everything he could think to do.

When he was satisfied with his work, he kneeled on the ground, the damp earth staining the knees of his khaki carpenter pants a deeper shade of brown. He tipped the packet of rose seeds into his palm and gripped them tight as rosary beads. Then he planted a seed and closed his eyes, praying at the only altar he knew.

At first, all he heard was the whispered mumbling from his lips, but then there was a rustling behind him, the sound of slow breath releasing. Someone else was there, and Hart’s pulse skipped a beat.

She came back.

Hart stopped mumbling, stopped breathing, and stood, full of hope. He turned around slowly to see who was there. But in a garden dense with miracles, with the unexplainable, with things that didn’t belong yet somehow still managed to exist, what Hart found standing before him was the one thing he’d never expected to see in the Wish Garden. He looked so out of place in his suit. And though they looked alike, this man was so unlike Hart in every way.

He let out a disappointed exhale. “Hi, Dad.”