by Amberlee Day
“Really?” Peter asked, still helping Reva with her number. “I haven’t had strawberry pie in ages.”
“It’s all in the glaze,” Reva said in a nonchalant tone, a pleasant smile on her round face. “And the crust.”
“That sounds wonderful. Will you be selling any?” Kenzie asked.
“A few,” Reva said. “If you want, I’ll save one for you.”
“Absolutely! Thank you.” Kenzie raised an eyebrow at Peter, and he smiled back, anticipating a delicious treat to look forward to later. Putting those thoughts aside, she asked the couple, “What are your thoughts about the race today? Feeling prepared?”
Loren and Reva looked at each other. “No,” Loren said, “not really. But it sounded fun.”
Kenzie cleared her throat. “Okay. Well, I need to warn you, it’s not an easy route. There are quite a few hills.”
“That’s okay,” Reva said, nonchalant. “If we get tired, we’ll walk. And we can always call an Uber.”
Kenzie nodded. “Sounds like you’ve thought this through. As long as you don’t push yourself beyond your limits. We want everyone to complete the race safely.”
After extracting a promise from them that they’d check in at the finish line if they indeed decided not to complete the race, Kenzie and Peter waved them off and wished them well.
“I see now why you do these things,” Peter said, watching Loren and Reva walk away hand in hand.
Kenzie grinned, and slipped her arm around Peter. “Yeah,” she said, “the fundraising is good, but it’s the people who come out that make these runs so extraordinary. Though I admit those two are extra-extraordinary.”
When race time arrived, Kenzie stood on a makeshift platform with her microphone, and delivered what she hoped was a rousing motivational introduction along with reminders of the rules. Peter smiled encouragingly at her from nearby, reassuring her that the event would be a success. Then the runners were off, and the race began.
Chapter Sixteen
Peter had promised Kenzie dinner that evening, and although they were both exhausted, he kept his promise. “A celebratory dinner in honor of a good race day.”
They’d both gone home and showered and met back at The Country Gentleman. Peter couldn’t take his eyes off her. Kenzie’s beauty stunned him in a white skirt and sky-blue top that made her eyes and tan pop. How could someone who had given so much of herself that day still be glowing, and look at him the way she did? “How much do you think was raised for cancer research today?”
Kenzie told him her estimate, and he whistled softly. “Not bad. Makes it worth the time you put into it.”
“It really does. That, and the people I meet. Like that ‘strawberry shortcake’ couple. When they checked in at the finish line, they mentioned they’re from Alaska.”
“And how did they do on the race?”
Kenzie shook her head, a smile twitching at her lips. “They said they finished. I mean, they were kind of running as they reached the line, so maybe they did. Or maybe they did call an Uber, who knows. But they survived.”
“That’s good,” Peter chuckled.
“And then there was that woman from California. Did you meet her? She’s traveling around running different Strawberry Festival races in honor of her friend who lost her battle.”
“I don’t think I met her. I take it her friend liked strawberries?”
“She ran a self-pick place. It’s people like that who push through something awful to create something good. They inspire me.”
Peter took Kenzie’s hand and lightly caressed her fingers. He hadn’t kissed her since that morning—not really, properly kissed her—and even with her sitting across from him, he ached to hold her in his arms. “You inspire me. And you inspire them.”
“Do you think so? I worry people hear from me too much.”
“From the way they cheered after you spoke? No way. You, Kenzie Vega, have an unofficial fan club. Or …” He leaned forward, cocking one eyebrow to tease her. “Is there an official Kenzie Vega fan club?”
Kenzie laughed. “I hope not.”
“Because if there is,” Peter continued, “sign me up. I’ll be president.”
She squeezed his hand back, and he wished they weren’t on opposite sides of the table, especially when she had that look in her eyes.
“It does feel good to be doing something that makes the world a better place, don’t you think?” she asked. “Like what you do, building houses. That’s putting something good into the world.”
Peter deflated. Indirectly, Kenzie meant that logging was bad, because it took something good out of the world. She didn’t know she was talking about him, but he got the message. That small weight of guilt and sadness grew just a little heavier on his heart.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It takes a lot of lumber to build houses.”
Kenzie rolled her eyes, but she still smiled good-naturedly at him.
She wouldn’t smile like that if she knew.
He changed the subject. They still hadn’t ordered food, but Peter was tempted to distract her from dinner and sneak off for some necking. “I wonder if our bird friend is still out on the lake. I haven’t heard him tonight.”
“You mean you haven’t heard our song yet?” Kenzie’s eyes sparkled, and Peter’s heart skipped a beat.
“Nope, haven’t heard our song yet.”
“Maybe he’s too busy eating his dinner to talk to us. Let’s go see him after we eat,” Kenzie said, as if she could read his mind. “You promised me dinner, Mr. Olson, and I’m starving.”
It was a good weekend. On Sunday Kenzie attended church with Peter and Paige again. She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed going with her parents as a child. The lessons were beautiful, and even if she didn’t have the added bonus of Peter’s smiling eyes by her side, they would have touched her heart. She made a goal to continue going no matter where this relationship with Peter went.
And as far as Kenzie could see, the relationship was going very, very well. They never seemed to get tired of each other. After spending all day together at the strawberry race, and all evening eating at The Country Gentleman and walking around Lake Limerick—where Peter made her very dizzy and happy with his kisses—and then going to church together, it was still hard for her to decline his offer of Sunday dinner with him and Paige. But she’d committed weeks ago to help two women from a local cancer patient support group, and would be spending much of the afternoon on home visits. They hoped to show Kenzie how campaigns could help meet very specific patient needs, something that cancer research funds didn’t touch.
On Monday morning, Kenzie waited at the cabin for a volunteer to arrive. She’d asked Tammy to try and get Shawna again, and realized too late that she hadn’t specified Shawna the Second. She thought the woman would be a good fit for the special Forest Bathing with Kenzie episode she wanted to shoot.
Fortunately, Shawna the Second was the one who showed up. Kenzie normally preferred to have a different camera helper each time, but today she smiled as she greeted her guest.
“I hope you don’t mind coming back,” Kenzie said. “As it turns out, you were right about something.”
Shawna was not an expressive woman, but now sadness touched her freckled face. “I hope it’s not about the tree harvesting.”
Kenzie thought she’d been dealing with the changes—which, so far, she had heard but not seen—but she flinched at Shawna’s simple words. She had to blink to keep tears at bay and focus on her goal. “Yes, you were right.” She explained about Nathan Turner’s death, and the aggressive loggers.
“I think that’s pretty typical,” Shawna said carefully, but not so carefully that Kenzie didn’t bristle. “I would bet that over the years Mr. Turner received many offers to log his land.”
“And he chose not to do it,” Kenzie pointed out. “No, I think this Evergreen Logging Company chose its timing carefully, to catch the family when they were vulnerable.”
“Logge
rs have to make a living, too,” Shawna said. Kenzie didn’t necessarily agree, but she made a mental note that she liked this lady. Shawna was more interested in being honest than in pleasing Kenzie.
“You sound like someone else I know,” Kenzie said. “I’m sure there’s another side to all this, but what I’m interested in right now is saving as much of this forest as I can.”
Shawna nodded. “How can I help?”
Kenzie explained the plan—something she hadn’t shared with Peter. She didn’t think he’d understand. Shawna looked doubtful as well, but followed Kenzie across her backyard lawn to the forest’s edge, where Shawna began filming.
“Friends,” Kenzie said to the camera, “for almost a year now you’ve shared these woods with me. We’ve walked in all kinds of weather: sunny, misty, and occasionally snow. Magical. You’ve connected with tree bark and fern greenery, bullfrogs and robins, and we’ve even seen a few deer. This forest has helped you as it helps me daily to escape life’s stresses and put some balance into your life. As Henry David Thoreau wrote, ‘I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.’
“But coming to you today, I have some news that I think you will find as devastating as I do. Loggers are clear-cutting this beautiful forest. Three hundred acres of woods, which provide beauty, peace, and homes for a wide variety of vulnerable wildlife. This is an entire ecosystem we’re talking about, razed to the ground as if it were wheat in a field. Within a month, this place will no longer exist, but be replaced by a broken, ugly clear-cut.
“The clearing has been going on for at least a week, probably more. I can hear it, but so far I haven’t seen the damage. Today we’re going to walk out, get close to it. I invite you to feel the peace of the forest, and then see just how this logging company is razing it to the ground. Come on.”
Kenzie didn’t wait for Shawna to comment. She saw the woman’s frown behind the camera. But Kenzie had already heard that side of things from Peter. That case had been presented to her—kindly, from someone she cared about. He hadn’t convinced her then, and she wasn’t ready to hear more.
As she made her way through the forest, Shawna filming her from behind, Kenzie thought about Peter. They’d walked here together the previous week, and she’d been able to share this place with him. She wanted to bring him again while it was still here. But what she really wanted to do was stop the logging, at least enough to prevent complete deforestation.
The farther they walked, the louder the trucks and equipment became. Kenzie followed the sounds, branching away from the pond and toward the middle of the property. It was easy to see the open sky through the trees now, and the brighter it got, the heavier her heart became. The dark forest’s mystery and romance were gone, at least in that part of the woods, and she moved toward it with labored steps.
When they finally approached the clearing, Kenzie found the noise and light unbearable. As she could better see the destruction, she thought she’d be sick. Stacks of fallen trees, ripped stumps, branches littered on the ground wherever she looked. The trucks were on the far side of the gigantic scar, not close enough to see the loggers themselves. But they were there. While Kenzie watched and Shawna filmed, giant claws on one truck took hold of a pine tree. The menacing device cut the tree, lifted it, pushed it through to cut off all the branches, and stacked it with others. The whole process took about ten seconds. The claw went for another tree, and then a third.
When Kenzie realized she really was going to be sick, she turned to the camera to quickly share her message. “Evergreen Logging.” She swiped at the tears running down her cheeks. “They have social media presence. Find them online and let them know it’s not right to destroy forests like this. Clear-cutting is wrong. They don’t need to take all the trees to harvest. People care. We care.” She kept a steady gaze on the camera as long as she could, then swiped her finger along her neck. “Cut. That’s it, Shawna, thanks.”
Kenzie was thankful that Shawna didn’t criticize her. She hurried ahead, back down the trail, where she couldn’t hold back the sick feeling anymore.
Chapter Seventeen
For the next few days, Kenzie kept very busy fighting her war with Evergreen Logging Company. She got connected to a community email group and left an inflammatory post. The neighborhood had all been aware that logging was going on but not the extent of it, and she was pleased to see people getting passionate about everything from concern for wildlife, to the impact on their home values, to the time of day the loggers started working. Several said they’d be filing complaints with the sheriff’s office and environmental protection agencies.
Because the cleared area was outside city limits, Kenzie attended a county commissioners meeting and presented reasons they should stop this clear-cut. While several on the committee expressed the need for jobs and the value of forest harvesting, others were unaware of the large cut and reacted with the same upset Kenzie felt. She left the meeting glad to have spread her message, and hopeful it would make a difference.
She also made two new Forest Bathing episodes, something she didn’t normally do more than once a week. The more she posted on MyHeartChannel, she reasoned, the more chance she had of fanning the flames. Also, she didn’t want to miss an opportunity to film her precious woods in case things didn’t go as she hoped, and they would soon be gone.
Tammy sent different camera helpers for her, which she was glad to see. She hadn’t expected Shawna the Second’s words would upset her, but she found they did. And it made her nervous that she didn’t want to think very hard about why Shawna’s opinions—and even more importantly, Peter’s—made her uncomfortable. She wasn’t ready to look at it yet. She also wasn’t ready to tell Peter what all she’d been up to, campaigning against the loggers.
With both the gala and the strawberry race out of the way, Kenzie’s next fundraising goal wouldn’t involve speaking or organizing, just participating. She told Peter about it one afternoon when the two of them worked to help tidy up Paige’s backyard. The poor woman was still down with difficult morning sickness—or all-day sickness, as Paige called it—and only managed to get through her work most days.
“It’s a relay race,” Kenzie said. She dumped her bucket of weeds onto the yard waste pile, her gaze turning to Peter and raking him from head to toe. He was turned to the side, installing extra supports for Paige’s overburdened rose trellis, and oh, that was a good view of his muscles. Kenzie blinked to refocus her thoughts. “Relay race. So, each person on the team takes turns with different legs of the race, and it goes for two days straight.”
“But you stop and sleep at night, right?” Peter teased.
Kenzie shook her head. “Nope.”
Peter’s eyes widened. “No?”
“You run at night, too. You only sleep when it’s not your turn to run.”
Peter wiped sweat from his brow and put his work-glove-covered hands on his hips. “Why?”
“Because it’s fun,” Kenzie laughed. It felt good to laugh; in the past days, focusing on her war against the loggers and her fear of losing her forest, she hadn’t done much of it. “And it pushes you to your limits. Don’t you like things that push you?”
Peter shook his head and went back to his task at hand. “Climbing a mountain, swimming across a lake, challenging yourself to do something hard … sure. I can see that. But running all night long doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Silly, you don’t run all night by yourself. You just take a turn. Or turns. It depends on how many people are on your team.”
“And how many are on yours?”
She explained about her Bosom Buddies group, and how all of them participated in Seattle’s annual three-day walk—which did not include walking at night—but that only a couple of them ran with her in the relay race. The rest of the team came from coworkers an
d friends they could pull in.
“Normally we have twelve, but we’re down to ten this year. One lady just had a baby, and Tammy can’t make it. Her son has a soccer tournament.”
“Does that mean you have to run more?”
“It does. Makes it harder, but that’s just part of the challenge, right?”
Peter chuckled. “I suppose. When will you be gone?”
“Thursday afternoon until Saturday night. It’s just at Mt. Rainier, but we need to be there so early Friday that we got our rooms starting Thursday.” A fun thought tickled her, and she gave him a flirty look. “Want to come? You could add to our team numbers.”
Grubby and sweaty from working in the hot sun, Peter took two unexpectedly efficient strides toward her, suddenly close enough he wrapped her in his hot arms and kissed her. He tasted salty and smelled like roses.
After a moment enjoying this happy spot and submitting to his muscles, she raised an eyebrow and asked, “Does this mean you’ll come?”
He smiled at her, and she suddenly had lovely visions of her and Peter enjoying Mt. Rainier together in between running legs of the race. “No,” he said, his smile not dimming.
Her own smile slipped. “No?”
He kissed her soundly again, before releasing her so he could wind up the garden hose. “As much as I would love to spend time with you, I think I’ll let you do this one on your own. I’d have a hard time taking Friday off, much less Thursday. With this good weather, there’s a lot to do at my job site.”
“Are you sure? It would be so much fun. We always go out to eat a big dinner Saturday night when we’re finished.”
“It sounds tempting—except for the all-night running part—but I’m afraid I need to pass.”
“Okay. But I’ll get you another time.” She picked up a box of hand garden tools to put away. “Do these just go in the garage?”
“Yes, thanks. You can just put them on one of the shelves.”