And the Trees Crept In(64)

“Gowan, what’s happening?”

He doesn’t answer me. Doesn’t even look up. Instead, he looks at Cathy.

“We need to get help,” he says, standing up. “This can’t go on.”

This is La Baume. Another La Baume: Sunlight streaming into the kitchen, across the surfaces, warming the floor. The smell of flowers from a vase on the counter. That vase broke months ago.

Cathy stares at nothing, her mouth hanging open.

“Catherine,” Gowan snaps. “We. Need. Help.”

She turns deadened eyes on him. “Why? We’re all dead, anyway.”

Gowan sighs, squeezes the bridge of his nose, and stalks into the garden.

And…

I’m in the garden. Some other me. I look… different. I look… fresh. Young. Maybe not happy, but closer to it than I am now. My hair is a bright, luminous chocolate brown; there are no shadows beneath my eyes. I seem to have all my teeth. No mold in sight.

And Nori!

I rush forward, unthinking, everything inside me roiling and shifting urgently. Nori is playing in the flower bed, oblivious to Gowan and the other me. She is smiling—no, laughing. Silent laughter I haven’t seen in so long. My heart breaks with yearning.

I turn back to Gowan in time to see him smile at her—me—and take her—my—hands.

“I have to get help,” he says. “This can’t go on. People are leaving in droves. All this talk of another world war… I don’t know what’s true. But we have to act now or it’ll be too late.”

She nods, but her words are pleading. “You don’t have to go… or… I could come with you.”

“Stay here and take care of Nori. God knows Cathy won’t.” He pulls her close, embraces her. Whispers in her ear. “I love you, Silla Daniels.”

“I love you,” she whispers back, tears falling from her eyes like I’ve never cried. Genuine, simple tears. Not a storm, nor a crisis.

“I will love you forever,” he says, and my heart drops because those are the words—the words—he spoke to me that night in the not-forest. He pulls back then, enough to kiss her. Their passion burns so bright I have to turn away.

And I see Gowan—my Gowan, dimmed, less, sad—watching from the gate. In his eyes, a quiet storm rages. He looks at me, and all I hear is Do you see?





The garden sparkles in orange hues of sunset, the old wooden table draped with a pale cloth and sprinkled with bundles of dusty-pink roses from the garden. I smile at them, even though I wish Cath had just left them in the earth.

So pretty.

Cath made a cake and I take a slice from Gowan’s offering hand.

“I like your nail polish,” I tell Cath, noting how it matches the roses. Her smile is so wide that a jolt of pleasure jumps through me.

“Thank you, Silla dear.”

But the smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Shall we?” Gowan asks, indicating the garden.

I grin, and we walk off alone, away from the light of the kitchen.

“Did you see her nails?” I ask him when I sit down.

“Pink?”

I shake my head. “No… they were all messy, painted over her cuticles.”

“I guess she had shaky hands.”

“Gowan. There was some in her hair.”

He shrugs. “Maybe she’s tired.”

“It’s more than that. Something’s wrong with her. Can’t you see it?”

He glances back at Cath, who stands with Nori in the kitchen doorway, smiling at us.

“Maybe. I’m not sure.” He smiles at me. “But tonight, you’re all I care about, birthday girl. How about you eat your cake and make a wish?”

I lean closer to him. “What if my wish had already come true?”

He leans closer, too, kisses me tenderly. “Then wish for the impossible.”

I eat the cake while he watches, and offer him the last piece. He opens his mouth and I pop it inside. He licks my fingers on the way out, eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Tease,” he says.

I hand him the plate. “Another?”

He kisses me on the cheek and I giggle. “That’s more like it.”

When he comes back, there are three pieces on my plate. “Two more for you, one for me.”

It’s amazing cake. Moist and subtle, vanilla and raspberry. I am done with my third when Nori skips over. She puts down her plate and shows us what she is holding.

Something dangles from her fist, the one attached to the bad arm, so it shakes a little with the strain of lifting it up to show us. Her mouth is covered in pink icing. More pink.

Look, she signs, one-handed. Look!

The thing swings like a fatty bit of raw bacon covered in cake.

“What is that?” Gowan says, laughing with a frown.

Worms! She laughs and digs into her piece of cake for another, while she holds the first.

Everything s l o w s down around me.

Wrong. This is wrong.

Cath still stands in the kitchen doorway, the light pooling around her. She is laughing, tears running down her cheeks.

Gowan lets go of my hand, and the air seems to bite with cold.

“Give me that,” Gowan says, his demeanor utterly changed. “No more cake.”