ten

Abby opened her kitchen cabinet and handed Griffin her emergency flashlight, her hand still shaking from the sudden surge of adrenaline.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m gonna take a look around upstairs in the loft, check out the balcony to make sure nothing’s fallen on the roof.”

“Be careful.” She felt compelled to say it, though she trusted Griffin’s skilled eye and experience. The man had weathered many storms—­tracked them, followed them, ridden them out. But that had been the closest lightning bolt Abby had ever witnessed, and she couldn’t shake the unease growing in her abdomen. She tried to see out the windows again, but the constant rain kept her vision limited to the cobblestone steps that curved around her little cottage.

“I will.” Griffin touched her cheek. “With the power out, we won’t be able to see much until morning, but it’s not safe to go poking around outside with only a flashlight. Don’t worry, okay? Whatever mess is waiting for us tomorrow, we’ll fix it together. The worst has already passed.”

“Okay.” A word she spoke but didn’t mean. Not in the slightest.

Though she couldn’t see what kind of damage lurked beyond her darkened windows, she was certain whatever was to come was far from over.

Before the first hope of daylight winked over the horizon, a chainsaw whirred outside her window, revealing Griffin was already up and at work. He’d offered to take the old futon upstairs in the loft while she hunkered down for a night of tossing and turning in the bedroom. Apparently insomnia was contagious.

She pulled on a fresh pair of jeans and a lightweight sweatshirt before bustling into the kitchen. If Griffin was committed to starting out this early, then the least she could do was find a couple of thermoses for their much-­needed caffeine intake. She searched for her father’s old Coleman thermos, the one he sipped from on chilly mornings while he worked the land. Rummaging past the pots and pans, she found it hiding behind a colander and hugged it to her chest.

She’d let Griffin use this one today.

Only, as she crossed the kitchen toward the front door, two steaming thermoses in hand, Griffin came inside, wearing an expression that made the static in her chest return.

“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t know if you’d be up yet.”

“How come you didn’t wake me before you went out?”

“I thought you could use the sleep.” His gaze fell to her father’s thermos as she handed it to him with a smile. “Thanks.” But instead of bringing it to his lips, he set it on her table and pulled out a chair, as if there wasn’t a night’s worth of storm cleanup waiting for them beyond her dining room walls.

“Uh . . . what are you doing?” she asked as he sat and placed his elbows on the worn table’s surface. “This coffee is designed to be portable, Griff. Let’s go get to work. I’m ready.”

“Abby.” Griffin sighed and let his head fall heavy into his hands. “I need you to sit down for a minute.”

“But why? Is it worse than you thought out there?”

“Please.” He gestured at the chair across from him.

Robotically, she did as he asked, keeping her eyes locked on his drawn features.

“Whatever it is, Griff—­just say it. What?” Anticipation of any kind wasn’t her friend.

After a forceful scrub down the sides of his face, he leveled his gaze on hers once more. “The oak didn’t make it.”

The oak didn’t . . . But no matter how she repeated it in her head, she couldn’t make sense of his words. “What?”

“The sharp crack we heard last night, that splintering of wood, it was a lightning strike. A bolt shot clean through one of the branches at the crown and then straight into the trunk. We’re fortunate it didn’t catch fire.”

She shook her head. “But trees get hit by lightning all the time. That doesn’t mean it’s—”

“It reached the heartwood, Abby.” Words that clenched around her lungs and squeezed every last ounce of oxygen from her chest. “The internal blisters have already started. It’s not the kind of wound a tree can heal from—­not even one as resilient as ours. Not this time. I’m sorry.”

She tried to stand up, to push out her chair, to go and see for herself just how wrong his assessment had to be. Because their tree had survived over a hundred years’ worth of storms and blight and disease—­even fire! This couldn’t be how it ended, not after all they’d done to save it. Not after their entire town had been rooting for it to stay put and outlive their children and grandchildren.

“There has to be something more we can do for it, Griff. We just need to think. Research all our options. It’s too soon to make that kind of call.”

He reached for her wrist as a familiar warning chimed in his voice. “Abby.”

“No.” She shook her head again. “I won’t accept that. I can’t. I need to see it for myself.”

“I figured you’d want to, which is exactly why I told you first—­before I call Winston or my contact on the committee. I knew you’d need a few minutes.”

“A few minutes?” A humorless laugh bubbled up her throat. “To do what, exactly? To be fine with just letting the tree die when there could still be options to save it? No. I won’t let you give up on it, not without a fight. Not this time.”

The stricken look on his face told her exactly where the statement had led him, because it was the same place her mind had traveled. Back to that stuffy living room in late August when her father had announced he wouldn’t be receiving treatment.

“Don’t go there, Bee. This isn’t the same as what happened with your dad.” His words may have been quiet, yet his meaning was a volcanic eruption of stuffed emotions. “Your father had a choice. And he chose to live out his days the best way he could. With you.”

She ripped her wrist away. “And yet never once did you try and change his mind.” Angry tears rushed behind her eyes, but she refused them release.

“Is that really what you believe?” Hurt flashed across his features. “That it didn’t crush me when your father told me he wasn’t going to accept medical intervention? Because that’s a lie. It did crush me, and not only because of the loss I would feel, but for you, too, Bee. I knew what his death would mean for you. What it would cost you.” His voice hitched, broke. “And I loved you too much not to beg him to research every possibility out there before he made up his mind.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks and dripped off her chin.

Griffin gentled his voice, his face softening with a compassion that only increased her pain. “The risks were too high; the odds too low. He refused treatment because he didn’t want you to watch him suffer.”

Her throat ached as she remembered her father’s words to her that night. “I want you to remember my joy, not my suffering.”

She swiped at her cheeks and studied the floor beneath their feet, allowing an eternity of silence to fill the space between their unspoken thoughts.

“If there were something more I could do for that tree, I’d do it. But wishing things were different doesn’t make the truth any less true.” He exhaled a weary breath. “It will have to come down—­soon. Many of the crown’s branches are in rough shape from the storm. One already punctured the roof of the solarium.”

“Then just cut the bad branches down.”

“Abby, you know I can’t prune a dead tree for the sake of nostalgia.”

She squeezed her eyes closed. “So what then? You just chop it down and haul it away and rid our town of a namesake? A legacy?” She shook her head, wanting nothing more than to cover her ears and make his prognosis disappear. To make this entire conversation disappear.

She started for the door, thermos forgotten on the table, along with her foolish dreams for the future.

Griffin swiped the pile of letters off the counter and held them high in the air. “The heart of this town has little to do with the dying heartwood inside that old oak. It’s in here. In these letters. In the memories that have spanned more than a century and through multiple generations.” His voice grew husky, tender. “I know what that tree represents to you, but saying good-­bye to it doesn’t have to change this new path you’re on. It doesn’t have to mean—”

“I’m not on a new path, Griffin.” She pushed past him. “This land is where I belong, where I’ll always belong. I was a fool to think I could ever be somewhere else.”

“You’re not a fool for believing there’s a life outside this place. Look at me.” He blocked the door before she had a chance to yank it open. “Your father isn’t on these grounds or at this inn or even a part of that great beautiful namesake of a tree outside. He’s inside you. He’s a part of your creative eye and your compassionate spirit.” He paused to release a breath. “He was patient and dependable and had a knack for loving people who didn’t believe they could ever deserve a second chance—­and yet he proved them wrong.” Griffin’s voice strained on the last word. “And all of that helped to shape the person you are today—­that’s the real legacy of Arnie Brookshire. Not the land he worked, but the daughter he raised. You are his living legacy, Bee. And only you get to decide how you’re going to live it out.”

Without another word, he twisted the knob and pulled the door open wide for her, allowing her an escape to find solace in the land she’d grown up on, the land her father had taught her to memorize like a clock face. Only, this time, when she stepped onto the same cobblestone path she’d walked thousands of times before, she’d never felt more lost.