From the blog of Stories Rule Press author Mark Posey.
The Things We’ll Never Know — Part One
How many times have you made someone’s life a little better without ever knowing it?
It’s an interesting question, isn’t it?
Most of us can probably remember someone who did something for us that mattered far more than they realized. A kind word when we were having a lousy day. A little encouragement when we were ready to give up. Someone who listened when we needed to talk.
And chances are, they have no idea how much it meant.
But turn the question around. Have you ever done something like that for someone else?
Funny how much harder that question is to answer.
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit while writing The Summer Garden.
The novel follows Scotty, a widower who finds himself drawn into a community garden populated by a rather opinionated collection of people.
Scotty is grieving the loss of his wife, Anne. He’s lonely, although he’d probably be reluctant to admit it. And he’s convinced he doesn’t have much left to offer anyone.
The gardeners, meanwhile, seem determined to prove him wrong.
Connie feeds him. Nora gives him things to do. Arthur works alongside him without expecting conversation. Dave makes him laugh, often when he’d rather not.
And Scotty notices every bit of it.
What he doesn’t notice is how much he’s doing for them.
There’s a young photographer named Maya who spends a great deal of time at the garden. She’s cheerful, funny, and has a habit of taking pictures of people when they’re least prepared for it.
Scotty treats her like any other twenty-six-year-old. He asks about her photography, remembers which gallery rejected her work, and argues with her about tomatoes.
Nothing remarkable about any of that.
Except Maya has suffered some terrible losses of her own. She’s also responsible for helping care for her grandmother, and she’s grown accustomed to people treating her differently once they learn her story.
Scotty doesn’t know any of that.
And that’s precisely why his friendship means so much to her.
He sees Maya, the photographer. Not Maya, the young woman who’s endured a tragedy.
When she eventually explains this to him, he’s astonished.
He hadn’t done anything special. He’d simply treated her like a friend.
And that was exactly what she’d needed.
There’s another moment in the novel when Arthur is away dealing with a family matter. His garden plot begins to suffer, so the others quietly step in to look after it.
Nobody organizes a committee. Nobody makes a grand announcement. They just notice something needs doing and do it.
When Arthur returns, his vegetables are thriving.
To the people who helped, it was a little weeding and watering.
To Arthur, it meant that while he’d been away worrying about his family, someone had been looking after something he cared about.
That’s the thing about kindness.
We tend to measure it by what we do. The time we spend, the effort involved, the inconvenience.
But the person receiving it measures something entirely different.
And the two aren’t necessarily related.
A five-minute conversation might be forgotten by one person before lunchtime and remembered by the other for years.
We rarely know which of our ordinary moments will turn out to be extraordinary for someone else.
There’s a line in The Summer Garden where Scotty realizes he’s spent months privately counting the kindnesses he’s received from the gardeners without considering that anyone might be counting his.
I think most of us do that.
We know how other people have made our lives better. We remember the little things they’ve done, sometimes for decades.
But we seldom imagine that someone might remember us in exactly the same way.
Maybe they do.
Maybe something you said last Tuesday made somebody’s difficult week a little easier. Maybe someone still remembers an encouraging remark you made twenty years ago. Maybe a person you barely knew thinks of you with enormous affection because you treated them with kindness when they needed it most.
You’ll probably never find out.
But think about the people who’ve done those things for you.
Then ask yourself something.
Why wouldn’t you have done the same for someone else?
Come Spend a Summer in the Garden
When Scotty moved into his new condo, the community garden across the street was one of its attractions. What he hadn’t anticipated was how much the people he met there would change his life.
The Summer Garden is a novel about unexpected friendships, grief, second chances, and discovering that it’s never too late to find somewhere you belong.
Curious? Start with the story.
Read A Handful of Dirt, the opening episode of The Summer Garden, free.
Ready for the whole summer?
Discover The Summer Garden at Stories Rule Press.
Releasing December 3, 2026, in ebook, paperback, and Deluxe Special Edition.
The Deluxe Special Edition is available exclusively from Stories Rule Press and includes a complimentary ebook with purchase.