Leo started coming every day. He learned to repot orchids without damaging their fragile, aerial roots. Margaret learned to call him Leo without stumbling. One afternoon, he asked, "Does it ever stop hurting? When your family chooses a ghost over you?"
Leo started a small business selling Margaret’s propagated succulents online under the name Magnolia Lane Transplants . He designed the logo himself: a broken terracotta pot with a green shoot emerging.
Leo didn’t trust adults. But the warmth of the greenhouse—the humidity, the smell of wet earth, the quiet—it felt like a womb. He stepped inside.
