A/N: Thank you for your encouragement – and patience!

Thirteen

Any act that remakes the world is heroic.

Duma Key – Stephen King

Kathryn hired a truck and took Tom with her to pick up the saplings. The trees were three years old and already budding, the pink and white apple blossom fragrant even in the lower temperatures of early morning.

"So we're going to have fruit this year?" Tom asked, as he drove them back to Maywood against the morning rush hour. "That's pretty cool."

"Well, maybe from the persimmon, if it's happy where it's set," Kathryn told him, "but it'll probably be another two years before the apples and peaches produce properly."

Tom turned to look at her with a shake of his head. "I don't know how you do that."

"Do what?"

"How you look so far ahead. How you're not be bothered by everything just… taking so long."

She laughed a little. "I guess I've learned patience. A garden takes seven years to mature from planting. That's when you can step back and think, 'Okay, I did a good job with this one.' Relax before that and you might as well just not bother."

Tom puffed out his cheeks. "I can't even imagine two months ahead and you're talking about years as if it's nothing. What happens if you get to the end of those seven years and the garden just hasn't worked? That's like… massive. What do you do then?"

She smiled. "Things never work out quite how you expect. All you can do is put in the hard work, do your best to steer things in the right direction and deal with the problems when they arise." Kathryn paused. "That's nature, and that's life. It's not nothing, but it's not impossible to deal with, either. We're all in the same boat, after all."

Tom sighed. "Sometimes I wish I had a crystal ball to tell me how everything works out. Like – whether I make anything out of my life or if I just stay this mess I've always been."

Kathryn watched him for a moment, noting the frown settling across his forehead. "If we knew how everything worked out, what would be the point of working toward anything at all? You're going to be fine. Just keep on doing what you're doing."

He snorted and raised his eyebrows. "Don't let my dad hear you say that."

"Listen," she said, leaning over and batting him gently on the arm. "You know what your dad's going to hear me say? He's going to hear me say that you're the best assistant I could have possibly hoped for, that you're the hardest worker I've had with me in all the years I've been landscaping, that I couldn't do what I'm doing without you and that I feel lucky you came along. That's what he's going to hear from me, Tom. Because it's true. All right?"

Tom didn't say anything to that. Kathryn didn't prompt him. She leaned back against the truck's wide seat and looked out of the window. They drove in silence, the azure blue of the Californian sky a vivid contrast against the dusty, car-clogged streets. She wondered how it seemed to him, this melding of the natural and the man-made, how closely they coexisted and yet how fragile that connection remained. Did he even notice this dichotomy? She tried to remember how she would have thought of such things at his age, whether, in fact, she had thought about them at all, or if life had been too full of other concerns. Without consciously seeking to Kathryn found herself back in the summer after she had turned eighteen: Justin's face, laughing at her from where he lay on his back on the deck of-

She blinked, fracturing the memory, sending it back into the unstirred darkness where it belonged.

They planted the saplings along the inner perimeter, alternating between species.

"Aren't they a bit close to the fence?" Tom asked, breathless as they puddled in the first peach with the sun in the elevens above them. It was taking an age to plant each tree, especially since they had to carry buckets of water from the gym every time they needed to fill the holes they'd dug.

"We're going to espalier them," Kathryn told him, just as breathless as they heaved the peach from its bag and between them, manoeuvred it into the waiting trench. "We'll train the branches flat against the fence and use it as a support."

"It'll hide that nasty bit of metal, too," said a voice behind them.

Kathryn and Tom turned to find a man with a wide, age-spotted face and long, straggling blonde hair and whiskers standing behind them. He was dressed in a shabby coat too hot for the weather and had both hands were gripped around the handle of a full bucket of water.

"Been watching you two beavering away out here," he said, as Kathryn's gaze dropped to the bucket. "I live over there, see," he nodded to the opposite corner of the square. "I kept thinking you were going to give up on whatever it is you're up to down here sooner or later, but you haven't so far. So I thought maybe you could use another pair of hands. Or at least an extra bucket."

Kathryn smiled. "That's very kind of you, Mr-?"

"Neelix," he said, putting down the bucket with an exaggerated sigh. "That's a fine peach tree you've got there."

Kathryn nodded, resting her hands on her hips. "It is. You know trees, Mr Neelix?"

He came closer, stroking one of the tree's leaves between his thumb and forefinger. "Oh yes. I worked in the orchards. For a while, anyway. Until they – well, until they laid me off. Then I travelled around a bit – here and there on the railroads. You know, just wherever there was work – which there wasn't much of, if I tell the God's honest truth. And now…well, now I'm here."

Kathryn smiled again. "You sound like just the sort of man we need, Mr. Neelix. How would you like to help look after these trees? I need someone I can rely on and who knows what they're doing."

"No mister," Mr Neelix said, contemplating the trees still waiting to find their homes. "Just Neelix. And you can trust your trees to me, ma'am. They'll be the best looked after trees in all of Los Angeles county, I can tell you that much for nothing."

Kathryn laughed. "Well, thank you. I have absolutely no trouble believing that for a moment. But I don't want you to think of them as my trees. Think of them as your trees."

He looked at her quizzically. "My trees?"

Kathryn shrugged, raising her hands in an expansive gesture. "Your trees, your neighbour's trees. Everyone's trees."

Neelix shuffled from one foot to the other. "Never had my own trees before."

She patted him on the shoulder. "Get used to it, Mr. Neelix. If I have anything to do with it, they'll be here to stay."

Neelix smiled so broadly that his whiskers fairly quivered. "Then we'd better get on with settling them in. Don't want those roots drying in the mid-day sun now, do we?"

Kathryn stepped back, holding her arm out to encourage him to go ahead. She glanced up and shared a look with Tom. They smiled at each other, and her assistant nodded.

Yes, she thought. It's a start.

[TBC]