Part 8 — “The Ones Who Left”
It started with a letter.
Folded twice, no return address. Just the words: “To the woman with the shovel.”
Mabel found it taped to the garden gate one Monday morning. The envelope was damp with dew, the handwriting loopy and unsure.
She opened it with Roo at her feet and read slowly, lips moving silently as she traced each word with a trembling finger.
Dear Gardener,
I don’t know if you remember me. I lived two houses down, with the blue porch. My mom used to yell at me for stealing tomatoes off your vines.
I didn’t steal them because I was hungry — not always. I stole them because they tasted like summer, and summer was the only time my dad came around.We moved when I was ten. Eviction. I thought the garden would be gone by now.
But last week I saw a photo on someone’s page — a dog, a mural, and a woman in a hat. I remembered you.Thank you for still being here.
—A.D.P.S. That dog? Looks like the one who used to sleep under the sunflowers.
Mabel pressed the paper to her chest.
She didn’t cry — not right then. But she sat on the edge of the raised bed and closed her eyes.
She could picture it — a boy with skinned knees and tomato juice on his chin, darting down the alley with laughter trailing behind. Another ghost coming home.
Layla arrived ten minutes later, earbuds in, paint on her hands.
“I brought more signs,” she called. “For the farmers’ market booth.”
Mabel handed her the letter instead.
Layla read it once. Then again.
“We should start a board,” she said softly. “For messages like this. People who used to live here.”
Mabel nodded. “Call it ‘The Ones Who Left.’”
By Wednesday, the board was up — made of salvaged plywood and old cabinet doors screwed together, painted soft blue, and mounted next to the pecan tree.
A small tin box held pens and thumbtacks.
At the top, Layla had written in bright yellow paint:
“If you remember the garden… we remember you.”
The messages trickled in.
From a woman in Chicago who remembered learning how to braid hair in the shade of the trellis.
From a man in his forties who said he proposed to his wife next to the cherry tomatoes.
From a kid, now grown, who confessed to burying a time capsule under the lemon balm with a GI Joe and a note that read, “I hope the world gets kinder.”
Some came in envelopes. Some were scrawled on scrap paper. A few were emailed to Layla through the garden’s new website.
It was as if the earth had opened its throat and begun to hum with all the memories buried just below the surface.
Mabel read every single one.
She pinned them with care.
And Roo, sensing something sacred, began sleeping near the board instead of the rosemary. Like a keeper of stories.
One day, a woman stood outside the fence for nearly an hour before stepping in.
She wore a long denim dress and carried a cane wrapped in silk flowers. Her hair was snow white, piled high like a crown.
Mabel was watering cucumbers.
“You’re Mabel Coates,” the woman said, voice soft but certain.
“I am.”
The woman smiled. “My name’s Georgia. I used to run the after-school reading circle here. You probably don’t remember. You were always digging near the rosemary.”
Mabel stared, then smiled. “Miss Georgia With the Hat.”
The woman laughed. “Still have it.”
They sat under the pecan tree, remembering names — Janelle with the gold tooth, Andre who swore sunflowers could talk, little Braxton who’d once tried to plant jellybeans.
“I thought it was gone,” Georgia said, voice heavy. “I thought they’d paved it all.”
“They tried,” Mabel said. “But roots are stubborn.”
Later that evening, Mabel watched Layla repaint the border of the memory board with little vines and gold initials.
Each letter glowed in the dusk.
“This place has gravity,” Layla said. “People are being pulled back.”
Mabel ran her hand through Roo’s fur. “Because we left something worth returning to.”
Layla looked toward the mural. “Jayson would’ve loved this part.”
“I think he’s in it,” Mabel whispered. “In all of it.”
The wind shifted.
The garden rustled — leaves, petals, papers on the board.
And just for a moment, it felt like the whole city had exhaled.
As if the ones who had left were finding their way home, leaf by leaf, letter by letter, memory by memory.