“That’s true,” Emilia said. “But imagine growing them yourself and then cooking something that you made entirely, from the moment of planting the seeds. Wouldn’t it be cool to make a sugar-root pie with your own sugar roots?”
Dyrk’s face lit up a little, and he nodded his agreement.
Then both kids started going a little wild picking out seeds and seedlings. Emilia showed them how to read the packets to find things that would be likely to grow in their plot.
By the end of it, they had to swap their hand basket for a carriage.
Emilia bit her lip and mentally calculated everything in it.
“What’s wrong, Emilia?” Mimi asked.
“Your father gave me some credits for our project. Wasn’t that nice of him?” she said. “But I have to make sure we have enough for everything we picked out.”
Mimi nodded sagely and Dyrk frowned.
She tapped her bracelet and swiped to bring up the transfer from earlier.
Emilia blinked in astonishment at the staggering amount that greeted her.
She was too stunned to hide her dismay from the kids. She had already gasped before she remembered they were watching.
“Not enough?” Dyrk asked.
“Plenty,” she said with a calm she did not feel. “Your father probably wanted to make sure we didn’t have to leave anything we needed behind.”
“He was showing off,” Dyrk smirked.
That was interesting.
“Aren’t you proud of your father’s hard work?” Emilia asked the boy. “He certainly spares no expense on the two of you.”
He shrugged.
Ra’as’s words from earlier came back to her.
He remembers how things were before…
Dyrk would probably rather just hang out with his dad than have all the cool stuff. Ra’as was spending money like it could replace spending time.
But that was an issue for later.
She wrapped an arm around the boy’s shoulders and was gratified when he didn’t pull away.
“Wait until he sees your garden,” she told him. “Your dad is going to freak out.”
“And when he eats our pies,” Mimi squealed.
They headed for the checkout together. Emilia was grateful that the kids seemed relaxed and happy. She wasn’t messing things up. She was helping. And it felt good. Better than she ever expected as she fielded problems back at the office.
“Whoa, look at this,” Dyrk said suddenly, ducking out from under her arm to dart over to a big box on an aisle cap.
There was a photo on the side of the carton and fancy lettering declaring it to be the Garden’s Best Friend Bot.
“It checks on the soil, it weeds, it waters,” Dyrk read off in amazement. “This is, like, perfect. That’s basically everything our plants will need.”
“That’s true,” Emilia said, stopping to look over his shoulder. “But we want to work on this garden ourselves, right? What’s the point if we can’t get our hands dirty?”
“Get our hands dirty?” Mimi echoed in delighted amazement.