Chapter 13
“Have you heard from Willow recently?” I asked as I climbed into Mr. Moore’s truck a few days later.
Following my attempted hospital visit, my thoughts kept drifting to the darkest of places, which was probably why I’d been too afraid to reach out to Willow in the days afterward.
“I went to see her, but she was in surgery.”
“Don’t worry. I called her mom, and everything is fine,” Trixy replied as I buckled my seat belt. “Dr. Mitchell found a shadow on her last CT scan. They did a biopsy and removed the suspicious tissue. Turns out it was a benign tumor, completely unrelated.”
Wow, what were the chances of that?
Letting my head fall back against the headrest, I closed my eyes and released the figurative breath I’d been holding since my ill-fated trip. “Thank God,” I whispered. Tension I didn’t realize I’d been carrying around suddenly melted away. “Will she be released soon?”
“I’m not sure, but we can go visit her this week if you want?”
“Yeah, I’d like that,” I replied as Trixy threw the truck into reverse. Maybe once I saw Willow’s infectious smile, I’d forget the empty look on her boyfriend’s face. “What exactly are we doing today? You never said.”
When I received a text twenty minutes ago informing me she’d be at my house within the hour to take me on a special outing, I’d been suspicious. I didn’t trust Trixy when it came to surprises. Not since the time she told me she had tickets to a really cool show, and I’d wound up at Monster Jam.
“Oh, you’re going to love this,” she said, smiling broadly as she dragged out the suspense. We came to a stop at the entrance of my neighborhood, and Trixy checked both ways before turning out toward the highway.
“Well,” I said, shooting her a pointed look, “I’d love to know what this is.”
“We’re going to my cousin Rowan’s farm,” she finally told me. “I figured if you’re going to do something dangerous like cut down a tree with a chainsaw, you should be supervised by someone who knows what they’re doing.”
I froze, my arm suspended in the air as I reached for the radio. “Wait, really?!”
Trixy swatted my hand away. She had a strict driver-picks-the-music rule she enforced with ruthless precision. “Unless you remembered a different meaning for ‘chainsaw’ and no longer want to kill innocent plant life, then yeah.”
“What other meaning could it possibly have?” I asked, resigning myself to classic rock.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. You love interior design. Did you want to refresh your bedroom with chainsaw-inspired decor? Or maybe you wanted to go on a murderous rampage?”
I arched an eyebrow. “If those are my only other options, I think I’ll stick with plant homicide. You’ll help me hide the body, right?”
“As your best friend,” she said with an exaggerated sigh, “I’m pretty sure that’s a requirement.”
The trip to Rowan’s place took about forty minutes, and as we drove, Trixy told me about the dirt bike competition she was riding in next weekend.
In return, I recounted Stella’s not-so-happy homecoming, how I’d applied for a job at Studio Red, and the horrifying moment when I’d walked in on Drew and Maisie yesterday afternoon.
“They were doing it on the couch?” Trixy said, nose wrinkled. “That’s disgusting.”
“Not the living room one. It was the leather sectional in the basement,” I told her, “but still. I went downstairs to see if there was any frozen pizza in the deep freezer and got an eyeful of my brother’s ass.
His room is, like, ten feet away. Would it kill them to move to his bed and close the freaking door?
Now I’m going to have permanent eye damage. ”
Trixy burst out laughing. “On the upside, you’d look pretty cute with glasses.”
I flipped the sun visor down and glanced in the mirror. “I would, wouldn’t I?”
As I studied my face, I was shocked to see a girl who resembled my sister staring back at me.
Technically we were identical, but it became all too easy to tell us apart once I was sick.
I lost the round cheeks and healthy glow we once shared, followed by my hair, so we hadn’t looked like a pair in years.
While Stella stayed healthy and fit, my weight withered away to sharp lines and jutting bones.
But the girl reflected at me now? Her razor-sharp cheekbones had filled out, and a healthy blush colored her skin. The transformation was startling. Had I really been so wrapped up in my bucket list that I hadn’t noticed my own changing appearance?
“Here we are,” Trixy said, interrupting my musing. We pulled onto a gravel drive so well hidden by overgrown trees, I never would have noticed it if not for the sign on the side of the road. It read Honey Hills Apiary.
“What’s an apiary?” I asked.
“A beeyard,” she explained. “It’s where honeybee hives are kept. Rowan’s husband, Kurt, grows flowers that he sells wholesale to local florists.”
The truck lurched along the unpaved path until the trees thinned to reveal a white, two-story house with green shutters and a sprawling front porch.
Beyond the building, I spotted a greenhouse, then rows and rows of color: orange and pink snapdragons; yellow daffodils, sunflowers, and black-eyed Susans; and vividly purple clematis.
When Trixy mentioned her cousin owned a farm, I’d pictured cornfields or maybe a dairy operation. But this was stunning.
As Trixy parked in front of the house, a man in his earlier thirties with a full beard stepped onto the porch.
He was the definition of tall, dark, and handsome, the type of person who looked like he belonged on the set of a movie or maybe a fashion show runway, not a beeyard in the rural Midwest. His hand shot up in greeting when he saw us.
“Hey, Rowan!” Trixy called as she jumped down from the truck. “You weren’t at Grandma’s house for the party on Sunday. What gives?”
After a quick introduction and tour of the farm, Rowan led us past the greenhouse and into the woods, following a well-trodden deer trail.
It felt like stepping through a gate into a new world, and I tried to remember the last time I was inside a forest. The green-tinted shade was a stark contrast to the sunny field we’d been in moments ago, but it was peaceful.
Here and there, beams of light filtered down between gaps in the foliage, casting swatches of gold across the ground’s earthy tone.
Birds chirped in their nests above us, while squirrels raced through the branches.
I stopped walking for a moment, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath.
In, out. In, out. The air smelled like wet moss, pine needles, and the sweet woody fragrance of decaying plant matter.
“Cara, are you coming?”
A short, two-minute walk brought us to a dead-looking maple tree.
The bark was peeling away in large chunks as if the trunk had rotted from the inside out.
None of its leaves had returned. Rowan must have prepared for our visit, because all the underbrush was cleared away.
A gas-powered chainsaw, a triangular orange block I later learned was called a felling wedge, rope, and safety equipment were already waiting for me in a pile.
“Here she is,” Rowan announced like he was presenting a prize on a game show. “I’ve been meaning to take care of this for a while, but when Trixy said you wanted to learn how to use a chainsaw, I figured I’d save it for you.”
He spent the next few minutes explaining the method we would use to cut down the tree.
I learned how to estimate the felling zone, how to create a proper notch, and the correct way to hold a chainsaw.
The saw was surprisingly lightweight, but once it was on and the chain moving, I could feel its power vibrate up my arms.
Multiple safety reminders later, it was time.
“Remember,” Rowan called over the roar of the tool, “the instant the tree starts leaning, pull the saw free. Then you need to set the chain brake and walk away along our escape path. Keep your eye on the tree in case it doesn’t fall the way we planned.”
“Got it,” I called back.
Once he positioned himself a few feet behind me to act as lookout, I lined the guide bar up and started a horizontal cut. It took longer than I thought to saw through the thick trunk, but when it finally started to tilt, Rowan and I moved to safety.
Trixy cupped her hands around her mouth and at the top of her lungs shouted, “Timber!”
I grinned, and together, we all watched the maple topple.
* * *
Dinner cleanup in the Samuel household followed a choreography so well-rehearsed it didn’t require any coordination.
Mom and Dad, who always cooked and set the table, bowed out first to enjoy the rest of their evening.
Stella took her place at the sink, rolled up her sleeves, and tackled the pots and pans.
Drew loaded the dishwasher with practiced efficiency, and I cleared the table, returning condiments to the fridge and stacking placemats. Whoever finished first swept the floor.
Typically, the kitchen buzzed while we worked. One of us would put music on, Drew would start cracking jokes, and Stella and I would bicker over nothing. Sometimes the volume climbed high enough that Dad had to shout from the living room for us to settle down so he and Mom could hear the TV.
Tonight, the quiet was unmistakable.
Stella and I hadn’t spoken since the pancake debacle, and after nearly two decades of being our brother, Drew knew better than to get involved in one of our fights. If he didn’t ask questions or take sides, then he usually made it out unscathed.
That didn’t stop him from filling the awkward silence, however.
“The big two-oh is coming up,” he said casually as he slotted a handful of forks and knives into the silverware rack. “Any thoughts on what we should do for our birthday?”
No one answered.