January ended with brittle winds and a whisper of frost. February tiptoed in, gentler, the edge of winter blunted. The mornings in Rockchapel were no longer bone-chilling but still cold enough to warrant a second layer. The sun lingered a little longer in the sky, teasing the promise of spring—but not quite yet. Everything was still quiet. Still waiting.
Joanne sat on the porch of the McDonald farmhouse, her breath fogging in the late afternoon air, a blanket wrapped loosely around her shoulders. The earth around her was still asleep—fields brittle and brown, bare branches shivering against the horizon.
In her hand was the other phone. The one Jeffrey had tucked into her suitcase like a secret. It had buzzed with near-clockwork precision ever since she left—every hour, every day. Short ssages. Long rants. Casual updates. Strategic thoughts. Missives that looked like journal entries ant for her eyes only.
He told her about the warehouse in Oakland, about the dying trucking line that, on paper, looked like a liability but was in fact a diamond buried under managerial rubble. Heather hadn’t seen its worth. She had been too proud, too shortsighted. The previous owner—an old family-run operation—was furious at the ss she’d made of it. But Jeffrey... Jeffrey had called him. t him. Listened. And now, the man was helping him from the shadows.
Joanne read every ssage. Every one. But she never replied.
She told herself she was still angry. Maybe she was. Maybe she was pretending. Maybe she just didn’t want to forgive him too easily. He had walked away—again—even though she’d asked him to stay. Even though she had offered him everything.
Still, she couldn’t help but admire the brilliance of his plan. She watched the markets quietly shift. She saw reports trickling through industry channels—the subtle bruises on Imperium Logistics’ polished façade. Not just bruises. Cracks.
Jeffrey was doing what he did best: using honesty and unfiltered truth as a weapon. Just like he had with Congressman Campbell, he was weaponizing transparency, leaking details to journalists who couldn’t ignore the story, not when it practically wrote itself.
It was working. She could see the pieces fall. She could feel the tide turning.
She hadn’t replied to him once, but every day she sat on that porch, wrapped in her blanket, reading his words with a soft ache in her chest.
He was fighting for their future. Quietly. From the shadows.
And she knew now—she didn’t have to wait much longer.
As Joanne sat thumbing through the stream of texts, one more appeared—short, simple, and devastatingly tender.
[The adows in my view are all blooming with your favorite snowdrops. Have the snowdrops blood yet in your adow?]
Her breath caught in her throat.
Snowdrops.
She had planted them herself last spring in the adow over the old pond—delicate white bulbs, full of hope, placed gently into the earth like whispers of a promise. But Jeffrey—the horse, not the man—had trampled through the adow one careless morning and eaten the bulbs before they had even sprouted. She had cried for an hour, not just over the flowers, but over everything she couldn’t control.
She never replanted them. Or so she thought.
Joanne rose to her feet before her mind could catch up to her heart. Her boots crunched over the brittle grass as she crossed the yard, Fluffy trotting dutifully beside her, his nose to the ground.
She walked past the row of sentinel oaks, still leafless, their limbs tangled like skeletal fingers reaching to the sky. She walked beyond them, toward where the pond once shimred in warr months.
The adow was a quiet sea of golds and greys. The grass had lost its sumr green and lay pressed to the ground by months of cold. The air was sharp and still, the kind of silence that only winter could bring.
And then... she saw them.
Snowdrops.
Thousands of them, it seed. Tiny white bells nodding gently in the late afternoon light, their green stalks defiant against the chill. They had pushed through the frost-hardened earth, blooming in perfect scattered clusters like stars fallen onto the land. A soft wind passed through, making them sway, as if waving to her.
Joanne’s lips parted, and she pressed her hand over her mouth. Her heart swelled painfully, achingly, with sothing between joy and disbelief.
How?
"Ah," said a familiar voice behind her. "They’ve blood..."
She turned to see Patrick, his hands in his coat pockets, smiling at the snow-covered adow.
He nodded toward the flowers. "After he saw you crying that day, he ca here every morning before sunrise in the sumr. Replanted every last bulb he could get his hands on. Kept Fluffy tied up so he wouldn’t dig. Firmly told off Jeffrey to never get here. Wouldn’t let anyone talk about it—said it had to be a surprise. That Jeffrey..."
Joanne turned back to the field, her eyes brimming.
They weren’t even dating then.
Yet he had done all this.
In the quiet mornings, with no audience, no grand gesture to show off—he had co here with his sleeves rolled up and earth under his nails, planting bulbs like they were pieces of his heart. Tiny, stubborn pieces of hope. For her.
Had he been in love with her already?
Had he seen her future here—right here—before she did?
Was he imagining this very mont, picturing her smile through the snowdrops?
The thought cracked sothing in her, and it let the light in.
The snowdrops danced in the breeze, swaying like little miracles in a field made for them. Her heart, which had been folded tight and small like winter-bound petals, finally unfurled in the soft wind.
Tears traced silent paths down her cheeks, hot against the cool hush of February.
And she smiled—wide and bright and real.
Because Jeffrey had been planting more than flowers.
He had been planting hope for her long before she ever knew to ask for it.
Just as the swell of emotions threatened to overtake her, a sudden wave of nausea gripped her. She turned, intending to rush back to the house, but her legs faltered beneath her.
Grasping the rough bark of the oak tree for support, she doubled over and emptied her stomach into the frozen earth. The bitter taste lingered, sharp against the winter air.
Lately, she’d felt off—tired, queasy, not quite herself. She had brushed it off as winter fatigue, maybe a passing bug.
But now...
As the last wave of nausea passed, a realization settled in her chest—heavy, electric, undeniable.
Joanne wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, breathing hard, her face pale against the winter air. Fluffy whined beside her, nudging her leg as if he sensed sothing was changing.
Her eyes drifted back to the snowdrops—pure white, tender, quietly resilient.
Then she looked down at herself, one hand pressing gently to her abdon.
It couldn’t be...Could it?
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