Our yard was a blanket of green—not grass, but clover. As a child, I didn’t understand why people thought four-leaf clovers were luckier than those with three leaves. If you looked closely at our lawn you would see it was full of four-leaf clovers. My mother had located the mutation that gave clover its fourth leaf—previously thought impossible, because clovers are deceptively complex, with double the chromosomes of humans. What she wanted was to make her own luck.
-- Narration / Lily (Part One: 3)

Importance: Lily reflects on the clover-filled yard from her childhood, which symbolizes her mother's desire to control and create her own luck. Mae’s achievement in engineering four-leaf clovers from the more common three-leaf variety represents her broader ambition to manipulate nature and control outcomes, reflecting her belief in the power of scientific progress to shape destiny. The lawn of clovers becomes a metaphor for the broader themes of control...