He came on a Thursday, late in the morning, without a car Brandt recognized and without anyone walking beside him to announce who he was.
Brandt was on the north side of the garden with a wheelbarrow half full of pulled weeds when he saw the man stop at the gate on Fifth Street and look in. For a moment the figure was only a shape against the light, tall, in a dark jacket over a plain shirt, hands loose at his sides. Then he stepped out of the glare and Brandt knew him at once, the way you know a face that has rearranged your life whether you wanted it to or not.
Senator Micah Ellery.
He was older than he had been on the morning by the fence. Everyone was. The gray at his temples had spread a little. His face had the settled look of a man who had carried public rooms for years and learned which parts of himself to keep private in them. But his walk was the same, unhurried and exact, and his eyes moved the same way too, taking in the fence line, the sails, the tower, the garden, in a single unshowy sweep, as if he were reading a report written in wood and soil and paint.
Brandt set the wheelbarrow down too quickly. A clump of weeds slid onto the path.
Ellery walked the fence first.
Brandt forced his hands back to work and watched anyway. The senator moved slowly along the repaired chain-link, pausing where a post had been reset, touching nothing, just looking the way inspectors look at a roof they do not trust. At the corner he turned and studied the play structure, red and cream in the late morning light, with children already climbing. A girl in a yellow coat reached the tower platform and waved at no one in particular. Ellery smiled, briefly, before he could arrange his face into something more official, and the smile undid Brandt more than any stern expression could have.
He had prepared, in the small room above the store, a dozen versions of this encounter. In some he spoke first. In others he walked away and let the man enjoy his park in peace, which had felt, on certain nights, like the only decent option. In still others Sloan was between them, or a crowd was, or rain was, anything that kept the moment from being simply two men and the ground where it had happened.
Now none of his rehearsals fit. His mouth was dry. His crew vest felt conspicuous, as if its reflective striping were spelling out his name.
Ellery reached the garden. He stopped at the low border and looked down the rows of beds, at the stakes and the small green growth and the reprinted markers standing straight in the soil.
"You reprinted these," he said to Sloan, who had come up quietly along the path.
"Rain took the first set," Sloan said. "We do them until they hold."
"Good," Ellery said. "People should be able to read what they planted."
Only then did he look directly at Brandt.
It was not a long look, and it was not cruel. There was recognition in it, complete and without pretense, and a pause in which Ellery seemed to decide, deliberately, how much of the past to bring into the present moment. Brandt felt his shoulders rise and forced them down.
"Senator," Sloan said, "this is my crew."
"I know who he is," Ellery said, calmly. "Good morning, Mr. Brandt."
Brandt's voice, when it came, was rough from dust. "Good morning, sir."
Ellery glanced at the wheelbarrow, at Brandt's gloves blackened with soil, at the half-cleared bed behind him. "How long have you been assigned here?"
"A few weeks, sir."
"Henry treats you fairly?"
"Yes, sir. Fairer than I—" Brandt stopped. He had been about to finish the sentence in a way that asked for something. He could hear it. He let it die unfinished.
Sloan said nothing and stepped a respectful distance away, busying himself with a hose coil that did not need busying.
Ellery did not fill the silence quickly. He looked once more at the tower, at the sails above the benches, at the straight fence Brandt's own hands had helped to make straight.
"I did not tell anyone I was coming," he said at last. "I wanted to see the park the way a neighbor sees it." He turned back to Brandt. "We should talk. Not here in the middle of everyone's morning. When your shift ends today, if you are willing."
Brandt nodded, because speaking felt unreliable. "I am willing."
"Then I will be by the garden gate at four," Ellery said. "Bring nothing but yourself."
He walked on toward the play area, unhurried, a visitor in the place he had once come to inspect in a hoodie, and Brandt stood among the weeds he had pulled, holding his gloves, watching him go.
Chapter 29: An Apology in Work