Thursday. 3 PM. The bell rings.

I don't have to look up anymore. I know the sound of Grace arriving the way I know the sound of my own heartbeat—steady, expected, a rhythm I've built part of my week around. Two years of Thursdays. Small black coffee. The corner table with the cemetery view. Thirty minutes, sometimes more now, since the day she stayed past 3:30 and something shifted.

But today I look up.

Because Grace is carrying something.

In two years, Grace has never carried anything into this shop except herself and whatever weight she's holding that I can't see. She arrives empty-handed. She leaves the same way. The ritual is the ritual.

Today there's a small paper bag in her hands. Brown. Crinkled. The kind you get at garden centers.

"I brought you something," she says.

She sets the bag on the counter before I can respond, and for a moment we both just look at it—this small interruption in two years of sameness.

"You didn't have to—"

"I wanted to."

Her voice is quiet. It's always quiet. But there's something under it today that I haven't heard before. Something that sounds almost like... anticipation?

I open the bag.

Seeds. A packet of seeds, white paper with a picture on the front. Daisies.

"Lily loved daisies," Grace says.

I know this. I know this because Lily's handmade daisy mug sits on the shelf behind my counter, because Grace brought it to me four months ago and asked if it could live here, because some things are too precious to keep at home where you have to see them every day.

"I'm planting a garden this year," Grace continues. "First time since—" She stops. Starts again. "I wanted you to have some too."

My hands are shaking.

I don't know why my hands are shaking. It's just seeds. It's just a packet of seeds that cost maybe three dollars at the garden center on Fifth Street, and Grace probably bought a dozen of them, and this isn't— it shouldn't—

The packet slips.

Seeds scatter across the counter—tiny and pale and everywhere, rolling toward the edge, falling into the gap beside the register, landing in places I'll be finding them for weeks.

"I'm sorry," I manage, "I'm so sorry, I don't know why I—"

Grace is already helping. Her hands next to mine, gathering seeds, not saying anything about the fact that I'm crying now, not mentioning the tears sliding down my face while we pick up daisies that haven't been planted yet.

"It's okay," she says.

"It's not— I ruined—"

"You didn't ruin anything." She looks at me. Really looks. "Rena. It's okay."

We get most of them back in the packet. Some are lost—behind the register, under the counter, probably in my apron pocket where I'll find them in three days and have no idea how they got there. Grace folds the packet closed, sets it in my palm, curls my fingers around it.

"For your window box," she says. "Or wherever. They're not picky."

I'm holding daisies that Lily loved.

I'm holding hope that Grace had enough of to share.

I make her coffee. Small. Black. The same as always. But today I add a rosemary shortbread on the saucer—something new, something I've been experimenting with, something that feels like spring.

Grace looks at the cookie. Looks at me.

"On the house," I say.

"You don't have to—"

"I wanted to."

She almost smiles. Takes the coffee. Takes the cookie. Goes to the corner table where she's sat for two years of Thursdays, where she's held her grief and her silence and, lately, something that looks like it might be healing.

I watch her from behind the counter, the seed packet still in my hand.

Four years ago, Grace lost her daughter. Two years ago, she started coming here because she couldn't go home yet, because Thursdays were their day, because sometimes you need somewhere to sit with what you're carrying.

Now she's planting a garden.

Now she's giving seeds away.

That's what hope looks like, I think. Not the absence of grief. Not moving on, not forgetting, not any of the things people say when they don't know what else to say. Hope is having enough to share. Hope is buying extra packets at the garden center because someone else might want daisies too.

Grace sips her coffee. Looks out the window at the cemetery where other people's losses are marked in stone. Takes a bite of the shortbread.

She doesn't say if it's good. She doesn't have to.

At 3:47, she stands. This is longer than her old thirty minutes, shorter than some recent visits. The rhythm is changing, and that's okay. Rhythms are allowed to change.

"Thank you," I say as she passes the counter. "For the seeds."

"Thank you for the cookie."

"It's just rosemary—"

"Rena." She stops. That look again—the one that sees more than I'm saying. "Thank you."

The bell rings. She's gone.

I stand there holding a packet of daisy seeds and a hope I didn't know I needed. The corner table is empty. Lily's mug watches from the shelf. Outside, spring is doing what spring does—pushing through, coming back, refusing to stay buried.

I think about the window box on my apartment sill. The one I've never planted anything in because I assumed I'd kill it, because my track record with living things that aren't Mabel is not encouraging.

But daisies aren't picky, Grace said.

And hope, it turns out, is something you can grow.

I tuck the seeds in my apron pocket.

Thursday.