by Amy Vastine
She blinked back tears and took a sip from the small, plastic water bottle she’d been given, but nothing could drown the anger that burned in the pit of her stomach. Why this tree, Serena? She tilted her head back and looked aimlessly at the smudged ceiling. As if she would have answered that. What did he want her to say? That their tree meant something to her because deep down she still loved him? That what they once shared still meant something to her? Did he expect her to just forget about his role in her brother’s death, along with every dream she’d had about her and Austin’s future together?
She folded her arms and pressed them against her stomach. No matter how much she’d kept in touch with her parents, seeing them in person again and feeling their arms around her had sent her heart into free fall and had made her ache for the past. But life here could never be the same. Wishing for that would be just as futile as trying to bring Gale back or trying to save their tree. Which is why she’d stay only long enough to spend Thanksgiving with her parents—she owed them that—then she’d be off to her next cause.
She sensed Austin had walked up to her cell before he spoke.
“Had enough?” he asked.
She wasn’t sure if she was hearing condescension or fatigue, but his voice irked her either way. He’d clearly had enough of her. The feeling was mutual.
You’re lying to yourself again.
“Missing me already, Austin? Or does seeing me behind bars feed your ego?”
She really did want out, but she pulled her long hair over one shoulder then picked at her jeans as if she had all the time in the world. He scrubbed his hand across his military short hair. Outside in the sunlight it had looked lighter than she recalled, but in here it was as dark as his cocoa brown eyes.
“You may find it hard to believe, but we’ve all missed you and we’re glad to have you back home, but it would have been nice if you’d come back for the sake of family, rather than work,” he said, unlocking the cell and motioning for her to come out.
She leapt off the cot, slowing her pace to casual as she passed him. He grabbed her hand and the rough warmth of his fingers enveloping hers made her knees lock.
“Not so fast. I promised your parents I’d bring you home.”
“You promised my parents? You chop down my tree and lock me up then offer to drive me home. That’s rich. I’ll walk.”
“Your tree? I thought it was our tree.” He put his hand on the small of her back and guided her down the hall. She wanted to brush him away. She also didn’t want to brush him away. He didn’t need to know that every time he came within inches or touched her she wanted to take in his scent and his strength, bury her face in the crook of his neck and cry.
“Not since you killed it,” she said.
He flinched and she knew he didn’t miss the underlying reference to Gale’s death.
The voices of people heading in and out of the station blended with the rustle of paperwork and tapping of keyboards. Other than the few words it took for him to sign off and for her to reclaim her purse, neither of them said anything until they’d cleared the buzz and bustle of the place. Even with the afternoon sun reflecting off the cars in the parking lot, there was a November chill in the air. Serena zipped up her turquoise hoodie and stuffed her hands in the pockets.
“I’m parked over there,” Austin said, pointing to a silver pick-up truck and guiding her over. Serena walked over with him and got in without a word. Truth be told, her legs ached and a ride home with Austin wouldn’t be the worst thing she’d ever endured. She climbed in when he unlocked the door.
“Why didn’t you press charges?” she asked, when he got behind the wheel. “Why bother taking me in at all if it was really all in your hands? You could have simply dragged me into my parents’ living room and saved yourself the paperwork.”
“You were trespassing and obstructing development. And technically, you declined that option by being stubborn.”
“You weren’t technically on duty, if I overheard correctly in there.”
Austin tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and waiting for car to pass before veering onto College Town’s main road.
“No, technically I was on my way back to the station, but I had to check on someone on the way and that’s when I got the call from my project manager. You’re lucky they called me first, knowing I’m a cop, or you would have had a whole lot more to deal with.”
“And I would have gotten publicity that would have resulted in pressure on you to hold off on construction. You’re smart, Austin. So’s your slick contractor.”
“Don’t judge someone you haven’t met.”
She shook her head and looked out the passenger window. The town had changed a lot in the years she’d been gone. They passed an intersection she almost didn’t recognize, until she realized it was because one corner had gone from woods to shopping center and the opposite corner now had a gas station. Development really changed a landscape. It was depressing. She wished she could go back in time and change all the bad things that had happened.
“Why’d you do it? Buy the land behind our homes? To raze it?” she asked, resting her temple against the cold window.
“I didn’t buy it. Apparently, my grandfather did decades ago and had been sitting on it as an investment, only he never bothered to liquidate it. He never told me. Come to think of it, that’s probably why no one ever chased us—or any of the other neighborhood kids—off or filed complaints when we played out there. According to his lawyer, my grandparents began treating the land like it didn’t exist when it nearly tore their marriage apart. Grandpa wanted to sell it to help pay for the added expenses of my mother’s outstanding medical bills and me moving in with them as a kid and Grandma refused. Said she’d traced some of her ancestry to the place. I didn’t find out any of this until their wills were read. In the end, they left me the house and the two acres bordering the back.”
Serena stole a long look at him as he focused on the road.
He’d changed in the past three years. A few more creases around his eyes…and a harder set to his jaw. There was an overall intensity about him that wasn’t there before. He used to be so easygoing. Confident without being cocky.
They’d both had the advantage of living at home through college, since the campus was only fifteen minutes away. They were practically joined at the hip those four years, even more than they’d been before. They knew each other. Understood each other. But she’d never experienced loss until Gale’s death. Austin had lost his dad in the military as toddler and his mom to cancer when he was ten. And Gale…Austin had been like a big brother to him
Serena’s hands went cold. Death scared her. He was so much stronger than she was. She took a deep breath and hoping she could keep her voice steady.
“I’m sorry, Austin. I’m sorry I wasn’t here for the funeral and I’m sorry that you lost them. They’d always treated me like family. I loved them, too. My parents told me about the accident when I called home, but I just couldn’t—” Her voice cracked and she turned away.
“I know,” he said.
She quickly swiped at a tear, pretending to look back at some of the town’s early holiday décor that lit every lamppost and intersection. She hadn’t even called him. She’d sent a card. An impersonal gesture for someone she’d once loved. Her only excuse was that she was a coward. She couldn’t bring herself to experience the bone-crushing sadness she’d felt at Gale’s funeral.
Anger was a much easier emotion. It energized her and gave her purpose. It had also left her lonely and isolated from her family. Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure if the anger had been worth it.
After avoiding returning home for so long, she didn’t think she deserved any welcome warmer than a jail cell.
“My grandparents really loved you, too,” Austin said. He reached over and put a comforting hand on her thigh. His tenderness was confusing.
Serena frowned, then cleared her throat, thrown by how much harder accepting even a h
int of forgiveness was over giving it.
“Your grandmother would be giving you the lecture of your life for arresting me if she were here.”
“That, she would.” Austin laughed and put both hands back on the wheel. He glanced over at her. It was impossible not to sense when his eyes were on her. Serena felt her cheeks warm and rubbed her palm against the spot where his hand had touched her jeans. “I didn’t know how else to deal with you, Serena. You’d disappeared on me once and I didn’t want it happening again. Besides, I figured protest arrests had become some sort of honor badge for you. I had to process seeing you again and figure out what to say. About us, I mean. About what happened with Gale.”
“I don’t want to talk about Gale.”
“We need to talk about him.”
“Talking won’t bring him back and it won’t bring us back, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said.
His lips flat lined as he turned onto Lancaster Street and passed a house that was drowning in Christmas decorations. Serena remembered it. This guy went all out every year and come nightfall, when the stringed lights turned on, the place would have a carbon footprint the size of a city.
Austin passed through the neighborhood without another word and turned left onto their street.
While the shopping centers in town—and the Lancaster house—were already decked out for the Christmas season, fall mums and corn stalks still adorned most front porches of the craftsman style homes lining their block. They passed a scarecrow couple sitting on the stone steps leading up to a front door and an inflatable pumpkin and turkey big enough to scare away crows. One neighbor had enough pumpkins piled around the stone base of their house that they were flat out asking for trouble from over-excited, bored kids soon to be let out of school for the holiday weekend. Or maybe the haphazard piles had been dumped here by pranksters.
She remembered the times they’d hauled wheelbarrows of pumpkins out to “their” field with all the neighborhood kids and had pumpkin smash parties. Her mom used to lament over all the pies and roasted seeds she could have made, but Serena figured the wild animals out there deserved a Thanksgiving treat. Her dad thanked her for saving him from getting corralled into pumpkin cleaning.
Austin pulled into his driveway and turned off the engine. Her mom rushed out of her front door and down their porch steps, saving her from getting trapped into talking about her brother.
“Promise me you’ll stick around for a few days,” he said. “For your parents’ sake.”
Serena nodded but couldn’t speak. She stared down the driveway between their two houses. This had always been the perfect, symmetrical vantage point to see their oak tree in the field…every season, every year of their lives.
And it still was. He hadn’t cut the tree down.
CHAPTER TWO
Austin pulled his Academy sweatshirt over his head just in time to catch the basketball hurled at him with perfect aim. He tucked it under his arm and high-fived Joshua.
“You’ve been practicing. I’m going to have to up my game next time,” Austin said.
“Dude, no way you can beat me. You’re old.”
Austin chuckled. Any age beyond twenty was over-the-hill to a fifteen-year-old. He had to admit, though, their early morning one-on-one at the school’s outdoor hoop had wiped him out. Or maybe it was the frosty air stinging his lungs or the fact that he’d hardly slept. The image of Serena tied to the oak and they way she’d looked at him… He sat on the metal bench by the court and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
Joshua grabbed the basketball from him and began dribbling in place. “You okay, man? You look kinda weird today.”
“I’m good. Just a long night,” Austin said. It was kind of cool that Joshua was checking on him the way Austin did with him and the rest of the teens he mentored. “Your mom cooking turkey today?” Austin asked.
“Yep, and mashed potatoes and lots of pie. Can’t wait. Wanna join us? My aunt is coming over, too. She’s nice and not bad looking.”
Real subtle.
“I’ve got plans, but thanks. Have any of the other guys texted you back yet? I bet they too chicken to challenge my smooth hoop skills.”
Joshua checked the text messages on his phone.
“Steven and his parents drove to Virginia to see relatives. Rob says his stomach hurts and Neil says he’s grounded for getting a C-on his math test.”
That ticked Austin off. The kid didn’t need grounding. He needed tutoring, a little confidence and a lot of focus. All grounding the kid was going to do was compound his math anxiety and that kind of stress—especially with teens and their hormones—was a potential trigger for depression or worse. Austin had lucked out during those trying years. The counseling he’d gone through when his mom died and having Serena around had made a difference for him. He worried about a sensitive kid like Neil, whose parents expected no less than straight As without fail. As if life wasn’t tough enough at that age. Even with loving parents, it had been overwhelming for Gale and no one had noticed until it was too late.
“You two take the same math class?” he asked Joshua.
“Yeah, why?”
“How are you doing?”
“Pretty good. My friends think I’m strange for liking math, but I’d rather do math than write an essay.”
“Well, maybe you could get together with Neil to work math problems sometime.” Austin wished math had been his forte. He knew first-hand how Neil felt about math, but apart from peer support, he’d encourage him to get extra help from his teacher.
“I’m cool with that, if he wants to.”
“Good.” Austin stood up and swiped the ball back mid-dribble. “Let’s get you home. I promised your mother I’d haul any pumpkins in good shape down to the soup kitchen and take the rest to my lot. She’ll be glad to have her lawn back.”
“Just in time for her to start Christmas decorating. Dude, you don’t wanna know about the charity collection she’s come up with for that. You may need a bigger truck.”
* * *
Serena sat on the window seat in her old bedroom and pressed a cold washcloth to her face. She didn’t want her parents to see her eyes puffy and red. She’d planned on going downstairs early to help her mom cook, but she’d had a rotten night. Gale’s face was everywhere. His high school senior portrait on the mantel only reminded her that he’d never made it to graduation. His photo album on the living room end table captured the changes in his facial expressions over his last few years, from content to introspective. And she’d gone into his room across the hall during the night…thinking that it might help her finally cope with him being gone. She’d only fallen apart.
And then there was seeing Austin again.
She shook the washcloth out to cool it off and reapplied it to her eyes. The aroma of rolls and sweet potato casserole in the oven wafted up to her room. Her mom had always started early with baking desserts, so that she could free up the oven for the turkey. The heavenly scents and clanking of utensils and dishes reminded her of her last Thanksgiving at home. Gale had been alive. Her chest constricted. I miss you, Gale. I’m sorry that none of our talks were enough to help. I’m sorry I didn’t say the right things. Sobs returned in full force and she rocked back and forth.
She heard a tap at her door, followed by the same two-pitched creak that had kept her from sneaking out at night as a teen. She wiped her face with the cloth and tried to pace her breathing.
“Mind if I come in?” Her dad didn’t wait for an answer. He closed the door behind him and walked over to her with his arms open. Serena went to him and rested her cheek against his chest. Her breathing slowed to the rhythm of his heartbeat and the tension in her neck dissipated as he rubbed circles between her shoulders the way he used to when she was little. “I’m worried about you. So is your mom,” he said.
Serena righted herself and reached for a tissue off her dresser.
“I’m okay. It just…coming here and being around everything
that was him hit me hard. I’ll be fine. I just needed to let it out.”
Her dad sat down at the foot of her bed and nodded. She slumped down next to him.
“Getting through each day gets a little easier, but you never forget. Especially when the holidays roll around,” he said. “Your mom and I, we went through the stages—the denial, anger, bargaining, depression…acceptance. We’ve been through his things. We spent the first year abusing ourselves with thoughts about what we did wrong or what we could have done differently. The ‘what ifs’ ate us up. But we were surrounded with support from family and friends. From Austin and the Shales.”
Serena looked down at her hands at the mention of Austin. He’d been there for her family when she’d been too cocooned in her own pain and guilt to mourn with them. The man she’d both loved and blamed had stood his ground through the storm that had uprooted her. The Oak and the Reed. The old fable’s likeness to her and Austin hit her like a slap in the face. How many times had her dad read that story to her as a little girl? Why did some people have to experience life in order to grasp its lessons?
“Honey,” her dad continued, “you’ve got to accept the past. Your brother is at peace now. He’d want you to be happy and move on.”
“I was his big sister. He used to confide in me. I knew he was stressing about colleges and grades…and girls.”
He’d spoken to Austin mostly, though, in his last year. It was as if she wasn’t enough anymore. She’d always been the more outgoing and outdoorsy one with grades that were okay but not great. Gale had been the studious, over-achiever with the compulsively clean room. He’d built himself a reputation no kid should have had to live up to, even if the expectation was self-imposed.