The Seed Packet
Chapter 04 - The Seed Packet
The seed packet was ordinary enough to be terrifying.
Tiny. Brown. Damp at the corners. No readable label, no bright picture, no brand name visible. Just a small paper envelope sealed with a crease and softened by rain. It looked like something that belonged in a grandmother’s kitchen drawer, not beside a newborn in a police station during a storm.
Miller stared at it longer than he meant to.
Ethan noticed. “Is it bad?”
“No,” Miller said carefully. “It may be important.”
The wet note lay beside it, folded twice. Miller did not open it immediately. He wanted gloves. A camera. A supervisor who would understand why his hands had suddenly gone cold. But instinct pulled harder than procedure.
He had seen a seed packet before.
Three days earlier, in Lena Hart’s apartment.
On her windowsill had been six tiny brown packets lined in a row, each blank except for a small pencil mark inside the flap. The landlord said Lena worked at a community garden and saved seeds from plants she loved. Miller had not written the detail in the report because it seemed too personal, too soft for a missing person file.
Now one sat on his desk.
Beside a note.
Beside a baby wrapped in pink.
Miller looked at Ethan. “Where exactly did you meet her?”
“Bus shelter behind Bell’s Grocery.”
The younger officer returned with a blanket. Miller nodded toward Ethan. “Wrap him. Don’t crowd him.”
Ethan allowed the blanket around his shoulders but kept his eyes on the front door.
“She ran back,” he whispered.
“Back where?”
“The alley. A car followed her.”
Miller’s jaw tightened.
He opened the wet note carefully, only enough to see that writing existed, not enough for the camera to read over his shoulder. The ink had blurred in places, but several words survived.
Lena.
Miller.
Garden.
Hope.
Don’t let them claim her.
Miller closed the note.
The station seemed to shrink around him.
He looked from the newborn to Ethan, then toward the rain-streaked glass door.
The baby in his arms was not abandoned.
May you like
She had been delivered.
By a woman who knew exactly who might understand the seed packet.
