“Yes, Hector?” “I love you.” Everything stopped. In that instant, he realized: this was the prayer he had been waiting for. I love you was the key to the gates of paradise that Isaias hadn’t known he needed. To be known, to be loved, just as God commanded. Love—love was God, after all. Love was God, and love was Hector. Isaias had just needed that delectable fruit of knowledge to tell him what love could be. To let him see through the veil into the world of possibility of what they could grow in their garden together. Not just flowers, but the fruits of knowledge, and love, and new beginnings.
