She sat on the porch one evening with a slice from the best Dark Shoulder plant. Gus waited at her feet, attentive to every movement of the knife. The tomato had a depth of flavor she associated with her grandfather's summer kitchen, the first sweet note followed by a pleasant acidity and a richness that lingered after she swallowed. She wished Walter could taste it. He had always teased her for complaining about store-bought tomatoes while eating three of them anyway.
She put the remainder in a covered dish and carried it inside. Then she opened her notebook and wrote the plant number beside three words: Save, but question. The phrase seemed awkward until she realized it expressed exactly what she needed. She could value a plant without convincing herself she already knew its future.
That season she spent nearly as much time discarding potential seed as keeping it. From every experimental line, only a handful of plants earned a serious place in the following year's plan. She deliberately did not save from fruit that looked impressive but came from poorly performing plants. At first the decision felt wasteful; later she understood that declining to repeat a weak line was not throwing away the work already done. It was the work.
An early autumn storm ended the season abruptly. Rain struck the leaves for two days, followed by a sharp drop in temperature that left the late fruit soft and damaged. Mary Ann carried the last acceptable tomatoes into the kitchen in shallow baskets, then walked the empty rows before pulling the stakes. Her boots sank into the damp soil. The year's harvest would not pay even a fraction of her expenses, but it had answered questions the previous season had only raised.
At the feed store, Evelyn asked how much she had made from the project so far. Mary Ann considered lying, then answered, "Nothing. Less than nothing if you count the electricity."
Evelyn raised her eyebrows. "And you plan to do it again?"
"Yes."
"Then you either know something nobody else knows or you've developed a very expensive hobby."
Mary Ann smiled. "I think it's still the second one."
But when she got home and sorted the saved seed envelopes into their new tin, she felt the quiet certainty of a woman who was no longer experimenting merely to fill an afternoon. She wanted to find out whether the better plants could make better descendants, and whether the land could become productive again without requiring her to pretend she was still the person she had been before Walter died. That winter she drew a plan for the third season. It was more ambitious than the first two, but not reckless: fewer candidate lines, more careful records, better spacing, and a clear standard for what would earn another year.
There was one more thing she did before Christmas. She carried Walter's unused work gloves from their hook in the mudroom and placed them on the shelf above the seed tin, where she could see them without having to look at the empty barn. It was not a shrine and did not