On a shelf in the public reading room stood a box of seed packets. The lid said that anyone taking some should return a portion of their new seeds at the end of the season. Adela selected beans labeled Rasim and added her own name to the list. She had a small balcony and a large memory of her mother's garden. She had retired a month earlier, convinced she would finally have time for everything she once refused because of her shifts.
The beans did not meet her expectations. Adela left a question in the box, accompanied by a drawing of a very unhappy stalk. A reply awaited her the following week. Rasim could not conclude much from the drawing, but he admired the leaf that resembled a sail. He enclosed another packet. Adela replied that she had no spare pots. She added that, despite her evident lack of talent, she was prepared to give the beans another chance.
Through the summer they left letters among the packets. She learned that Rasim had an adult son living far away, hated television noise during lunch, and forgot where he had put his winter gloves every year. He learned that Adela ate lunch too late and still moved through her newly acquired leisure as though somebody might call her back to work. They wrote less and less about plants. Yet neither suggested that their letters stop traveling through the reading room.
In September the librarian announced a seed exchange gathering. Adela arrived carrying an empty packet. She recognized Rasim by the handwriting on his card, not the appearance she had imagined for months. He was shorter and far more restless. Before she could deliver her prepared confession, he said he had something to explain. His sister had grown the beans. He had merely copied the labels and delivered the box, hoping it would get him out of the house more often.
Adela opened the empty packet and showed him its bottom. She had nothing to return. They stood beside a table full of neat little promises and laughed so long that the librarian asked them to help stack chairs. As they worked, Rasim asked whether she would stop writing now that she knew he was no gardener. She said he still owed her the end of the story about finding his gloves in the bread box.
They drank their first coffee together on her balcony. Rasim brought a healthy basil plant bearing a large label: bought at the market. Adela placed it in her only empty pot. She left the bean packet on the table beneath a cup so the wind would not carry it away. Spring was still many months off. They did not need to decide what they would sow then to arrange the following Tuesday.