Chapter 8 #2
“Have a seat. I need coffee. And…” Griffin grabs a takeout container and cracks it open. “Robbie brought Ames cranberry muffins, and Ames shared the wealth. Help yourself.”
He pours us each a coffee, then leans back against the counter, sipping his, with his feet crossed at the ankles.
“So.” My throat feels tight. “Do I want to know what you and Ames discussed?”
Griffin’s eyes meet mine over the rim of his mug. “Oh, all of your deepest, darkest secrets, naturally. Which I’m going to exploit to win Big Dill.”
“Yeah?” I reach for a muffin.
“Mmm. There’s your emo guitar-playing exploits, your teenage obsession with David Hasselhoff, your love of motivational cat posters, your habit of practicing your Winsome Lumberjack of the Year acceptance speech in front of the bathroom mirror.
‘I’d like to say a few words to tell you all how I feel about this momentous event,’” he says in a deep voice I think is supposed to be mine.
I smirk around a big bite of muffin. “Liar. Ames knows I loved Sarah Michelle Gellar, that the only two songs I ever learned to play were oldies, specifically so I could impress Thad Gates sophomore year, and that if I ever tell any of the assholes in Winsome how I’m feeling, it means I’ve been replaced with a pod person.
As for the cat posters…” I grin. “No comment.”
Griffin laughs so hard he snorts coffee, and it feels like the sun outside got a little brighter.
“So what you’re saying,” he teases once he’s able to speak again, “is that there might exist actual photographic evidence of teenage Beckett playing guitar?”
I shake my head. “I never got a chance to play for Thad before his family moved away to Boston, whomp whomp. And I have obtained and destroyed all copies of me practicing. If you want to see me play, you’re gonna need a DeLorean.”
Griffin’s grin is wide. His eyes sparkle. And this competitive banter between us feels natural. Like we’re friends… or something… instead of enemies. Like yesterday’s insanity actually changed things.
Dangerous fucking territory.
I pop the rest of my muffin in my mouth and stand. “So, back to the trapdoor. I’m guessing the saw was a last-ditch effort to open it?”
“Yeah.” Griffin straightens and sets down his mug. “I can’t see a lock, not that I’d have the key anyway. In the letter Jim left me, he mentioned the door was sticky, but why have a dainty little pull cord if you’re gonna need a crowbar every time you open it?”
“What about another entrance? Another staircase. Outside, maybe?”
He shrugs. “We can look, but I doubt it. The way the whiskey barrel’s cantilevered over the side of the house—”
I snicker. “Pickle.”
He gives me a look like my mother when she says, Language, Beckett. “Pardon?”
“Back in the day, they used to store pickles in barrels,” I explain. As we’re talking, we’re moving outside and down the porch stairs. “So Jim made this a pickle barrel as a tribute to Winsome. Just like he put pickles in the stained glass windows. See?”
Griffin steps close, follows the direction of my pointing finger, and narrows his eyes. “Hoooold up. Those are pickles?”
I breathe in a lungful of his citrus shampoo, and my voice comes out rough. “Yeah. What’d you think they were?”
He shakes his head, laughing. “Don’t ask. I guess we don’t have to wonder what all the mushrooms were an homage to, huh?”
I grin. “Nah, that one’s obvious. Everyone knows about Jim’s talking mushrooms.”
Griffin grins back, and the moment gets charged. But this time, Griffin steps away first and points up at the treehouse.
“Um. See what I mean about the cantilever? The only area where the barrel’s connected to the main house is right where the trapdoor would be, inside.
” He slaps his palm against the trunk of the tree growing up through the barrel.
“I thought about climbing this bad boy, figuring out some kind of jumping fingertip hold that would let me reach the outside wall of the barrel, then swinging out and holding on with one hand while breaking the window with the other—”
I stare at him. “You’re not serious.”
“No,” he laughs. Then he gives me a pointed look. “Though we both know I’m an excellent tree climber.”
I roll my eyes. “So excellent. In fact, you remind me a lot of the contestants on this show called Extreme Wilderness Adventure—”
He gasps and points at me accusingly. “Hey! You take that back. I’ve never tried to karate-chop firewood.”
I shrug. “Not yet. But if the fancy city boot fits…” I nod down at the scuffed leather on his feet, which probably cost more than every item in my closet put together.
He hmphs and turns back to the house. “Anyway. I also considered buying a really tall ladder,” he continues. “But I decided to try the saw first.”
I shake my head, exasperated. “Or you could’ve asked me, an actual tree expert with climbing gear and no interest in watching you die, to help you.”
Griffin’s chin lifts stubbornly. “Ask you for help? A man who’s been trying to stop me from exercising my own free will about my property?”
“Right.” I shoulder past him into the trees.
“Where are you going?”
“There’s a rope bridge attached to the window,” I grit out. “I’m following it.”
“You could just ask me where it goes,” he argues, hurrying along behind me.
“Ask you for help?” I parrot back. “A man who refuses to allow me to access my own land?”
Griffin draws in a breath, but instead of exploding at me, his voice sounds almost conciliatory when he says, “I’ve already followed the rope bridge. Milo and I did. It gets all tangled in leaves and branches a couple hundred feet back here.”
I ignore him and push through the undergrowth, following the rope bridge’s path. The forest canopy above us is a mixed hardwood stand—sugar maple, American beech, some yellow birch. I automatically catalog the diameter at breast height, crown spacing, and natural regeneration patterns.
It calms me, a little. Not enough, but some.
Then Griffin points at a moss-covered stone wall cutting through the trees and stops short.
“That’s weird. Who put a wall way out here?” he asks.
“Old farm line,” I say tersely. “This was pasture once.”
“Pasture,” he repeats. “In the forest?”
I huff. “No. This used to be farmland. Clear-cut. For hundreds of years, people planted crops and raised animals right here. When they were tilling their fields every spring, farmers would collect the stones that pushed to the surface that winter and turn them into walls, mostly for lack of anything else to do with them. But over time, people stopped relying on farming. They stopped clearing, and the woods started creeping back. First brush, then poplar and birch, then hardwoods. The forest came back to itself in stages. Reclaimed the land. That’s why you’ll see different types of wood side by side. ”
Griffin looks around and frowns skeptically. “Some of these trees are massive. Feels like it’s been forest forever.”
“Not even close.” I brush my hand across the rough stones and feel the same sensation of connection that I always feel out here.
“Most of what you see now is second or third growth. The true old growth—trees that had been standing for centuries—that was cut out a long time ago. But we can push things back in that direction if we’re careful. ”
“Careful how?” he wonders.
“Selective harvesting.” I nod at a tall maple. “See that one? Straight trunk, good crown. That’s a crop tree. You thin out the weaker ones around it—the bent ones, the crowded ones—so the strong ones have sunlight and room to thrive.”
He makes a thoughtful noise. “But wouldn’t it be better if we just… left the land alone? No human intervention? Logging’s bad for the environment, everyone knows that.”
I huff. “Clear-cutting’s bad. Logging, when it’s done right, means the forests will last long after we’re gone and provide habitats for all the creatures that live here.”
“I… I didn’t know,” Griffin says, still wearing a frown that says he doesn’t like not knowing things, especially things I know.
I give a short nod and start walking again. “Most people don’t, especially since we grew up hearing about people clear-cutting rainforests and that kind of thing. But the truth is, the early settlers here—including my own family—shaped the land. Now, the land’s trying to shape itself back.”
“Until people go and build treehouses in the middle of it.” He rolls his eyes. “For who knows what reason.”
“My father actually helped Jim build and plan his house,” I volunteer as we duck under some low branches. “That’s why I’m confident he would have made sure there was a second exit, even if it’s via a weird-as-fuck rope bridge.”
“Your dad did?” His voice brightens with excitement. “I hadn’t even considered that Jim probably had help. Why don’t we call your dad and ask if he has plans or blueprints or—”
“No.”
“Why not? You expect me to ask you for help, but you won’t ask your dad?”
“No need. I’ve got this.” I keep walking, hoping he’ll drop it. He doesn’t.
“What if I call him—”
I stop walking and whirl to face him. “What if you just listen for once?” I snap.
“It’s complicated, okay? My father and I have had some disagreements since I took over Axford Lumber.
Dad wants things done old-school, the way he did them.
I don’t. And before his heart attack, he sold some land on the other side of our property because—”
I bite my tongue. I refuse to explain that he did it because he was trying to keep Axford going.
The last thing I want is pity or to be gossiped about.
“—because he thought it was a good idea,” I say instead. “I didn’t take the news well.”
“He sold to Derek Sullivan, right?” Griffin winces. “Sorry. I shouldn’t listen to gossip.”