Penn (Olive Township #1)

1. Olive Township

Chapter 1

Olive Township

I've outlived so many of the inhabitants I've loved.

Trailblazers and pioneers, land grabbers and cowboys. I was nothing, until they made me something. Big dreams accompanied them, along with grit and determination. Together we rose, piece by piece. Even today, we grow.

They named me Olive Township, a nod to the fruit tree growing in the arid Sonoran Desert. From a few came many, until it was an orchard. The people came, they built their homes and grew their families. There have been struggles and triumphs, feast and famine. Through it, I've loved them all. I've celebrated their birth, and grieved their passing.

I never claimed to be magical, but there is something about me. Something special. The residents feel it, even if they can't define it. Is it in the searing summer heat, the way the sun permeates the skin and curls into the marrow of the bones? Perhaps it's in the majestic Saguaro, the way it chooses the month of May to show off hundreds of the white waxy blossoms it hides all year long. Maybe it's in the survival despite an inhospitable environment, the way residents have learned to work around the dust and summer heat, the frigid winter nights and spindly flora. It's as though the terrain tests a person, and if they prove their mettle, they're in for life.

What the desert lacks in hospitality, she makes up for in beauty. The landscape produces a special person, one who is tough and bold. All that said, the inhabitants of Olive Township are fallible. They make mistakes. They demonstrate their knowledge, their courage, their idiocy. There have been a few bad apples along the way.

Oh, how I have loved them. Some have moved on, and I haven't wished them back. Others leave, and I long for them.

For one, in particular.