The Ides of Matt 2014

The Ghost Of Willow’s Past-6

“Come, walk with me.” Dusty held out a hand. He didn’t lead her toward the bedroom, where Amy would have followed him happily. He led her to the front door.

“I hope you aren’t throwing me out.” She slid against him reveling once again in the way their bodies fit together, in the way his lips now tasted of chocolate mousse and winter, the way he lost himself completely in her kiss.

With those strong hands about her waist, he pushed her back just a hand’s breadth.

“No way would I throw you out. You’re way to precious for that.”

“God, don’t ever stop saying stuff like that.” He made her feel like such a girl, all soft and mushy.

“Deal. But I thought maybe we could go for a walk together.”

That knocked the soft and mushy right out of her, but she nodded. Amy braced herself, knowing where they’d go. It was right, but no tree awaited her there. In a fit of sentimentality, she’d bought a small ornament that now rested in her coat pocket. Perhaps she’d hang it on one of the roses.

Dusty led her out into the night, up the winding paths beneath the silent Douglas Firs, and around the high, black wrought-iron fence encircling the city reservoir. The light of the full moon lit their breath in billowing clouds and cast brilliant pools on the trail separated by impenetrable shadows. They strolled the back paths leading to the Rose Garden as the silence of the night wrapped gently about them.

For a time they wandered hand in hand between the sleeping rose beds and finally climbed the stairs under the thorny arbors. In the bright moonlight, unbroken by a towering willow, rested the rose bed she’d always thought of as her family’s.

“Oh my god!” her voice came out in a cry. “But how?” A slender willow tree, barely taller than she was, stood in the center of the rose bed just where the old willow had.

“I made a call to the Parks Department. My dad worked for them for over thirty years, so I may have thrown his name around a bit along the way. I got permission, and purchased the tree this morning. The master gardener, who my dad trained, came in from vacation and he and I planted it together. I figured, if you wanted, we could come back together in the morning and bury your mom’s ashes here on Christmas Day. I already cleared it was okay.”

Amy didn’t fight the tears that slid hot down her cold cheeks. She wrapped her arms around Dusty and held him and laughed and cried some more.

She pulled the delicate bubble of blown glass from her pocket and hung it from one of the tree’s slender branches. There it filled with moonlight and hope and joy.

“It’s…” she had to swallow hard to speak. “It’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.” She could only look at the young tree with its new bauble, for some reason she couldn’t turn to look at Dusty.

“Well,” Dusty considered Amy’s profile and wondered for the hundredth time if he was about to do the stupidest idea he’d ever thought up. Of course that had never stopped him before.

A decade ago, the day before Dusty first reported for basic training, his father had stood with him by the Rosa canina, the old Briar Rose. They had stood a long time in comfortable silence, the summer tourists flowing past the two silent men entranced by a single rose bush among ten thousand.

“Your heart knows it is right for you to go into the Army. If you always listen to it, you will make no mistakes, at least not about things that are important.”

Dusty heard his heart clearly and knew it was the right choice as he gently turned Amy to face him and he looked down at the tracks of her joyous tears still glistening in the moonlight. He just hoped she thought it was right too.

Again he kissed her long and deep before setting his hands on her waist and stepping her back a half step so that he could form a complete thought.

“Amy?”

“Yes, Dustin?” He liked that she’d started using his full name.

“There’s something I have for you that I hope you’ll wear some day. It’s far too soon, but I know it has to be here, on this night of Christmas Eve, in front of this young willow tree. I hope, Amy Patterson, that someday you’ll want to wear this.”

He reached into his pocket, then held out his hand before her. In the center of his palm lay the circle of gold with a square-cut diamond he’d chosen that afternoon. It caught the moonlight and glittered.

Amy studied his hand in silence for a long time. She pulled off her right glove and reached out to trace a tentative fingertip once around the circle of gold before withdrawing her hand.

Then she looked up at him, studying him, clearly thinking hard. Maybe he understood his father’s silence a little better now, as Dusty found himself struck dumb, mute before this beautiful and amazing woman.

“I think…” Amy’s face revealed nothing to him as she inspected his face.

Then that smile flowed across her features as she pulled off her left glove and held her hand out to him.

“I think I’d like to start wearing it now.”

* * * *

Young Willow liked the little bubble of blown glass that caught the moonlight, and the reflection of the people past and present. Amelia and Hiroshi. Amy and Dustin. Old pain might run deep, but Young Willow knew, this love would always run as fresh as spring rushing to brighten new leaves, born of the Christmas cold and the moon bright.

Young Willow knew that the ghost of Old Willow would agree that they’d done well.

End Note

For over ninety years Old Willow (actually a weeping beech which looks like a willow) stood in the heart of the International Rose Test Garden in Portland, Oregon. It was removed for safety reasons in early 2012 and replaced at the turn of the year in 2013 by a young flowering magnolia in the same planting bed (A89). This story lands in the middle of Wait Until Dark, the third book in M.L. Buchman’s critically-acclaimed “Night Stalkers” series. M.L. Buchman lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest.