Chapter 14
Morgan
I join Sawyer in the dirt. I have no idea what’s come over him. I just know he needs me now.
While we kneel, I remove the shovel from his reach. I say nothing. Sawyer stays silent. Eyes downcast, head hung. He doesn’t look haunted now. He looks destroyed, like he must have when he lost Kennedy. I don’t know what pushed him to his outburst, but I know it has to do with her.
The sun descends under the horizon. Like with every sunset, the final glimmers of light seem suddenly to shine brighter than the rest—their last flash of defiant life. Then twilight settles over us.
Sawyer looks similarly like some sustaining light in him has gone out.
Eventually, he speaks. “This tree was blooming when we first saw the house,” he says.
I envision it—jacarandas blossom in pale purple popcorn covering their high outreaching limbs. On this hillside in this once verdant yard, the sight must have been gorgeous.
“The whole yard was a mess,” he says. “The whole house was. I didn’t want to buy it. I couldn’t see what Kennedy saw. But Kennedy pointed to this jacaranda’s purple flowers. She told me to look past the mess to the potential.”
I just listen. Honestly, I cannot imagine what Sawyer’s feeling. I focus on his words instead—on the Kennedy that no social media stalking or engagement photos on the minimalist mantel can capture. Only Sawyer’s memories bring this Kennedy to life, hopeful and keen-eyed and wise.
“One day our kids will play under these blooms, she said,” Sawyer recounts hollowly. His head droops to his chest once more. “But they won’t,” he says. “They won’t, because…because she’s dead.”
I feel like I did in Harrison’s Hardware, realizing what he plans on giving up for Kennedy’s peace.
Sawyer and I only share the same supernatural problem in the superficial sense, I know.
Deeper down, our situations couldn’t be more different.
I’m dealing with the inconvenience of my mischievous specter.
Sawyer is…wrestling with losing the woman he loves for the second time.
He reaches out, splaying his fingers into the dirt, like he imagines the soil can connect him with those memories. His own roots, desperate to return to the home he once hoped to cultivate.
“All the rot in this yard must have spread and choked it,” he speculates.
Staring up, Sawyer studies the withered limbs of the ruined jacaranda. Their dead fingers look like roots in reverse. Reaching heavenward, finding nothing.
“Do you think that’s happened to me, too?” he whispers. “What if I’m past saving? I mean, look at me. Furious with my dead fiancée for wanting peace.” He shakes his head ruefully. “Surely there’s something rotten in me already.”
Something rotten in me. His self-loathing strikes the hateful sound of a familiar chord. How often have I punished myself for how I dealt with difficulties? Something rotten in me. I’m a fucking liability.
Sawyer’s position is more understandable than mine.
I dealt with the consequences of my own honest mistakes, while Sawyer is facing fate’s harshest cruelties.
Still, how much have I hated myself for letting people down, just like Sawyer hates himself for depending on Kennedy’s ghost?
He retreated from living while I just retreated from people.
I haven’t retreated from him, though. I haven’t wanted to, just like I don’t want him to suffer in self-imposed isolation. He deserves to know what happened to him isn’t his fault. He deserves salvation from self-loathing for how he coped.
I nudge him gently.
“You don’t know a lot about plants,” I say.
Slowly, he faces me, surprise settling over him, like he’d forgotten I was here. The twilight hues shade his stricken features in unruly, surrealistic swaths of pale color.
“Dead plants,” I go on, “make great compost to fertilize living plants. It doesn’t choke them. It only makes them stronger.”
Now Sawyer’s eyes lock with mine. He holds my gaze, and I know he’s not merely seeing me in front of him. He’s seeing the life I’m promising him. Where he doesn’t have to resent himself for how grief’s hold weakens his resolve. Where, in Kennedy’s ghostly eyes, he has strength and selflessness.
I want him to. I want him to believe me, so bad. I want him to believe he’ll come out of this.
When he laughs, sarcastic but not scornful, I feel glimmers of hope. “I’m hardly stronger,” he replies. “I can’t even dig up this tree.” His voice’s hollow fury has subsided. He’s starting to sound like the Sawyer I’ve gotten to know.
I smile. “Let’s do it together,” I say.
I don’t wait for Sawyer’s reply, for whatever futile protest he’ll make, insisting he’s not up to this. He is. Even having only entered each other’s lives recently, I know he’s the strongest person I’ve ever met.
I stand, not bothering to swipe soil from my knees. I bend down to pick up the discarded shovel. With my other hand, I reach out to Sawyer.
He hesitates. He’s not wavering, though. He’s marshaling his spirit, summoning his strength. I don’t know how I know it’s what he’s doing—I just do.
Finally, he puts his hand in mine.
When I help him up, he nods. I’ve seen Sawyer shattered, the fragile, fraught way he gets—it’s not how he looks now.
He’s determined. His quiet strength has returned.
Without speaking, I drive the shovel into the earth, under the jacaranda’s loosest roots, pounding the head into the soil with my foot on the upper edge.
The root resists. I look over my shoulder at Sawyer.
Understanding, he steps closer to me. He places his hands on the shovel’s grip, close to mine.
Our forearms, mine wiry with gardening exertion, Sawyer’s thick with cords of sculpting and home-improvement muscle, line up next to each other.
I’m shoulder to shoulder with him. Together, we press our combined strength on the shovel.
It takes enormous effort. We’re both straining, putting everything we have into it. The exertion unsteadies us. Sawyer has to put his hand briefly on my hip to rebalance us. I don’t mind.
We push and push, and finally, the jacaranda starts to move.
Up the wavering shaft of the shovel, I literally feel the popping, ripping relief of the infinite root cords coming loose from the soil. It’s kind of grotesque, the root-pulling, but kind of wonderful. The wrenching, consummating feeling of freedom.
Sawyer and I keep pushing, keep dredging for that freedom. My muscles sear. I hear Sawyer grunt from low in his stomach with the continued pressure. I let myself do the same, our voices joining while the tree dislodges, comes uprooted, and finally slides out of the soil.
Freed, it collapses into the dead weeds surrounding us.
Chests heaving, Sawyer and I retreat. I drop the shovel into the dirt, calluses—past, present, and future—stinging in fierce pink splotches on my palms.
Sawyer looks to me. He surprises me by raising his hand for a high five. With his palms looking similarly fucked up, the gesture makes me laugh. Gamely, I high-five him.
The moment we touch, Sawyer closes his fingers gently over mine, holding my hand.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
His gaze is downcast, not meeting my eyes. I don’t think he’s heartbroken, though. Or not exactly. He’s solemn, peaceful in reconciliation with what we’ve done. In recognition that to keep living, sometimes you need to pull old dreams out by their roots.
I’m touched by the depth of the sincerity in his voice. When I nod, knowing there’s nothing more I need to say, he releases my hand.
In the corner of my eye, I notice movement, and the flicker draws my gaze to Sawyer’s front door. I see a shadow in the archway—there for a moment, then gone. Kennedy? I can’t help but wonder, even though I feel like I know.