In the hurry to and from the station, running to catch the train before it leaves you standing on the platform waving sadly to its retreating form, it is easy to overlook the corner garden. It is unassuming under glare of the loud neon signs above shouting this week’s sales and last week’s news. It does not tug at your sleeve like the sales clerks hawking the latest gadget you don’t need and trying to shove another flyer that will line the bottom of your recycling can by week’s end when you clean out your work bag. But it is there and sometimes you spare it a glance and it causes you to smile without realizing it or remembering it later.

One day you passed the garden after work and saw a woman standing in the garden, tying a slip of paper to the lowest branch of the maple tree. No one paid her a second glance, even though you’d never seen anyone in the garden before in all your years of running to catch the train. You paused and watched her. She turned around and hopped back, startled at your attention.

“I’m sorry,” you said with a nod, hoping you didn’t look frightening. You were, after all, a foot taller than her and she looked like she had been crying.

“I didn’t expect anyone to see me.”

You looked behind you at the crowd streaming in and out of the station, like two schools of fish passing in the deep sea without acknowledgement. Perhaps she was right.

“What were you doing?” The question was out of your mouth before you knew you were forming the words.

She stepped over the knee-high fence separating the garden from the street. “Sending secrets.” She put her finger to her lips and mimed the shushing action of no librarian you’d ever met. “Gardens are the best places for writing wishes, don’t you think?” She didn’t wait for an answer and was already lost in the crowd before you could reply.

You thought nothing else of it until two days ago, when you went to work and found yourself out of a job and came home to find you couldn’t think of one thing in the rooms that you would care about if it was stolen, or burned, or vanished like mist in the rain. It was as if your entire life no longer felt like your own and you wrote a note to your landlord saying your apartment could be let, all furnishings included. You packed your backpack with a few changes of clothes and a book that was covered in dust that you meant to read years ago, locked your door behind you, and dropped your keys wrapped in the note in your landlord’s mailbox.

At the garden, you paused and took a slip of paper from your pocket and wrote a one line note. You climbed over the fence, holding your breath in case someone yelled at you to stop, but no one did. The note the woman had left was nothing more than a wisp of paper fibers attached to a yellowed bit of string. You realized you had nothing to tie your note to the branch before remembering the twist tie around the bag of toffees in your pocket and you tied your note to the tree.

As you stepped over the fence, you looked up and almost ran into a school-aged child watching you with wide eyes.

“What are you doing?”

“Sending secrets.” You put your finger to your lips and the child mimicked you.

You smiled and left the garden behind as you entered the train station, not sure where you would go next, but knowing you’d not be back until long after your note was eaten by the wind and the rain. And that was good. The garden would do its job and perhaps, if you were truly fortunate, you might meet the woman again in your travels who told you about sharing secrets. Perhaps.