Will the pear recover, the final page asked. The diary lay open on the kitchen table when its author died. Her neighbor, Fen, shut it before the family arrived and remembered the question longer than anything else in the room.
The tree survived two difficult winters. Fen photographed each new branch but never sent the pictures, unsure whether the family wanted reminders. When the house was sold, the daughter found the diary and asked him what happened to the pear.
He brought the photographs in chronological order. They showed setbacks as well as growth: a broken limb, a patch of bare bark, then fruit small enough to miss from the path. The daughter wrote a dated answer on a separate sheet and placed it after her mother's final page.
They left the original question untouched. The answer belonged to another observer at another time, and keeping that difference visible made the continuation honest. At the sale, they asked the new owner to keep the photographs with the garden records. The diary had ended, but the tree had continued producing evidence for someone patient enough to look.