Chapter 3
After I eat, I drag myself back to the car to do what I came for.
The landscape of Grand Trees is too familiar.
That first summer Mom and I left San Francisco to spend six weeks among the sequoias—me as a pint-size camper and Mom as the art teacher—I was escorted by the flutter of butterflies in my gut and watched as the cityscape shifted to meadow, then mountains, then majestic redwoods.
When we left Grand Trees for the last time seven summers later, our escorts home were my fury and Mom’s shame.
But guilt rides shotgun this time, with my adolescent outrage still coiled tight in the back seat, ready to steal the wheel if I let it.
Mom lives at the end of a one-lane road on the outskirts of town, right at the border of the summer camp property. I have a hard time thinking of the house as Mom’s, even though it’s been two decades since she left us to move in with Sonny.
Muscle memory guides me along the route.
I remember each turn, having identified the landmarks as a child, with my forehead pressed to the window, counting the moments until we arrived.
Sonny hosted weekend parties for the summer camp staff, and I tagged along with Mom.
While the other campers headed home, filled with formative memories and promises of new pen pals, I was the cool kid invited into the inner circle.
We’d celebrate with Sonny’s improvised songs on guitar, and I’d dance as he sang.
I adored Sonny, until I didn’t. Until I was filled with shame that I didn’t notice how friendly he and Mom were becoming.
I make a slight right when I spot the abandoned fishing skiff on the side of the gravel drive.
I almost miss it—the once-white boat is corroded, and the hull is a pure rust color.
It bleeds into the background, becoming one with the redwoods, a reminder that the forest will return everything to dust eventually.
I slow to a crawl as I skate over potholes and kick up gravel against the fender.
Finally, the house comes into view, and the nostalgia catches me off guard.
It’s built around a tree that survived a big fire, which ravaged these forests and created a clearing with one strong ponderosa pine at its center.
It always felt sacred to me, as if the nearby trees gave the ponderosa a wide berth, grasping branches and spreading out in a concentric circle like a ritual.
Sonny told me that the house was enchanted. He insisted the whole town was magic—that once it became part of you, it would burrow into your bones. He was right, I suppose. Grand Trees has stayed with me, but not in the way he meant.
Parking beside a newer-model black truck, I grip the steering wheel and brace myself for this reunion. Once out, I climb the porch steps and lift the hummingbird knocker, and noise explodes in its wake. A threatening bark comes closer and closer, matched by raised voices and rapid paws on wood.
“Houdini!” The shout startles me as if it’s the first chant of a code phrase I’ll need to answer to gain entry, which wouldn’t be off brand for Sonny’s tree house.
The paws screech to a halt, and the barking ceases immediately. “Houdini!” the voice says, quieter now, before “Kennel.” I hear softer paws that prattle before fading out.
Finally, the door swings open, and my heart does a little hiccup.
There’s a beat of silence before he narrows his eyes. “I knew I knew you.”
His words are both an epiphany and an accusation.
But I still don’t know who this guy is or why he’s in the doorway of Sonny’s—I mean, Mom’s—house. The dog barks again; the mystery man hushes him with a quick command.
“Caleb? Who is it?” My stomach drops at the sound of Mom’s voice coming from inside the house. I’m not ready for this. Not even a little bit ready for this.
I shake my head, and my knight frowns, studying me with those liquid eyes.
He wasn’t warm at the bar, per se, but in comparison, now he’s an iceberg.
His huge body is rigid, and his stance is wide, as if blocking the threshold.
He folds his arms across his chest like a challenge, and I whisper, “I’ll come back later,” because I’m suddenly too disoriented to confront Mom tonight.
“Delivery,” he shouts toward inside. “Just a second, Nicki.”
Nicki? Nicki? Nicolette Hawthorne never tolerated anyone calling her Nicki. But I guess she hasn’t been Nicolette Hawthorne in a long time.
To my surprise, Caleb steps onto the porch and closes the door behind him. “I don’t know what your deal is—”
“My deal?” I rasp, taking a step back from his threatening posture. “You don’t know me.”
“You’re Eden, Nicolette’s daughter, who hasn’t bothered to pay her mom a visit in twenty years.
” That deep voice is venomous now, but I still feel it like a bass line nudging my body alive.
“And you show up on her porch without an invite and then scurry away like that sweet woman is someone to be scared of.”
Who the hell is this guy? As if it’s my responsibility to visit my mom. As if I’m the one who did her wrong.
“I don’t know who you think you are to lecture me about my relationship with my mother, but you obviously have been fed some bullshit. It hasn’t been twenty years. I came to Sonny’s funeral.” But even to my ears, it sounds like a weak excuse. “And I’m here now.”
“But are you stayin’? ’Cause if you were planning on running out of here like you did at the funeral, I think I’ll just tell Nicki the delivery driver had the wrong address. I don’t want her heart broken.”
“Her heart broken?” How dare he spin this, and how does he know I left the funeral early? “Again, who the hell are you?” I can’t help but yell.
I didn’t even yell at Jeff when he walked out.
Or when he walked into my new favorite café with his pregnant mistress.
But this guy. The Grand Trees Welcoming Committee, who pegged me as a damsel in distress and had the audacity to pay for my meal without my permission and then lecture me about my mother.
He thinks I’m the villain? This man deserves to be yelled at.
But he doesn’t even flinch, his frame on guard in front of the colorful patchwork of Sonny’s front door and the hummingbird knocker I once loved so much. When he speaks, it’s with forced calm, barely a growl.
“I’m the guy who watched your mom paint your portrait for the last twenty years. And I’m the guy who’s been taking care of her since Uncle Sonny died. And the fact that you don’t even know who the hell I am says about all I need to know about you.”
Uncle Sonny?
The front door swings open, slamming into Caleb’s back as all hell breaks loose.
“Houdini! Houdini, stop!” a young voice calls before a wild mass of fur and paws pummels me.
I lurch back and run into the porch railing.
I’m accosted by a tongue longer than on any domesticated animal I’ve ever seen.
He gets in two licks to my face before someone catches the dog around the collar and yanks him back.
The dog is howling, and I feel a sensation resembling slime trickling down my neck.
When I steady myself, I notice a coltish teen with her hand on the dog’s collar as he jumps like a freshly caught fish on the line.
The girl has stick-straight dark hair with blunt bangs and limbs she hasn’t grown into.
“I’m so sorry,” she says between pants of breath.
“We’re still training him. But he’s friendly, I swear.
He just doesn’t have”—she pauses as the dog unleashes another howl—“any chill.”
I wipe my face and brush my shirt, but it’s hopeless. I have a fur coat and dusty paw prints perfectly aligned over my boobs. “It’s all right.”
The girl cranes her neck to Caleb as the dog twists and squirms, trying to wriggle free. “Dad, can you help me?”
“Houdini, down,” Caleb says, and the dog drops to his belly and gazes up at him with hearts in his eyes. I guess Caleb’s voice has that effect on everyone.
It also dawns on me that this jerk could have prevented my assault with one stern command. I glare at him, and he raises his brow in challenge.
The girl looks from Caleb to me and back.
“Abby, can you give us a minute, sweetheart?” His tone brooks no argument.
But I’m done. We don’t need a minute. I need to check in to the bed-and-breakfast, take a shower, sleep off this strange day, and visit tomorrow after a full night’s sleep.
Just as I turn, I hear shuffling from inside, a dragging gait, and the door creaking open again. “What are you two doing out here?”
I look up to see my mom in the doorway, her face falling when she meets my gaze.
“Eden?” she whispers. She stopped dying her hair, so the silver falls across her shoulders like a shawl.
Her blue eyes are cloudy, so unlike the twinkling sapphires I knew so well.
And there are deep grooves around her smile.
When did I last see her? Last year? The year before?
And then I realize it’s been three years.
The funeral. I haven’t seen her since Sonny died. And she’s aged about ten since then.
She steps onto the porch, and Caleb grabs her hand, steadying her as she comes to me, wrapping her thin arms around my shoulders in an embrace that steals my resolve to leave.
“Who is she?” Abby stage-whispers to Caleb.
But whatever he says is lost to the sound of Mom’s relieved tears as she burrows her face in my neck.