Below the Tree Line

by Susan Oleksiw

  Felicity waited for the chief to get into his car and back out before turning to Jeremy. “He’s not well.”

  “He knows it.”

  “He told you something?”

  “He asked about the farm, the extra work, and then about my dad. What he was looking for were the warning signs of a heart attack.” Jeremy paused to give her a gentle kiss. “I get that kind of thing once in a while. People wondering what happened. Dad was healthy and then he dropped dead in the barn one day. It’s kind of scary.”

  Felicity liked to think they were too young to worry about such things. But also, she didn’t want to think about anything happening to Jeremy.

  “What else did Kevin say?” She followed him out to the kitchen, where Jeremy opened the refrigerator and pulled out a package wrapped in butcher paper.

  “He said Natalie’s on his case to get a checkup.”

  “Is he going to?”

  Jeremy dropped the package on the counter and turned around to lean against it, his hands cupping the edge. “I think he’s hoping someone will just take him to the ER and get it all done for him.” He wrapped his arms around her as she stepped into his embrace. She looked up at him, thinking about how neatly they fit together.

  “You’re guessing.”

  “But a good guess.”

  “Another log?” Jeremy tipped his head toward Felicity but made no effort to get off the couch and put one on the fire. Felicity glanced at the dying embers but couldn’t bring herself to get up either. “It’s getting late. This place is too comfortable.”

  Felicity rested her hand on his arm and rubbed gently. “You have cows and can’t stay, and I have sheep and can’t leave.” He turned and smiled.

  “That’s about the size of it.” He watched the fire spit its way to dying. “It’ll be smoking soon.” He went over to the fireplace and stirred the ashes. When he was confident they would die safely, he pulled a heavy screen onto the hearth and hooked it in place. Shadow sat up and watched.

  “I’m going over to see Dad tomorrow.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s been agitated since he took off, but he gets a little calmer every day.” Felicity had her bare feet stretched out to the coffee table and wiggled her toes beneath the light woolen throw that covered her legs.

  “Have you gotten anything more out of him?”

  “Not much.” She watched Jeremy sit in a chair and pull on his socks and boots. “Mostly some incoherent jabber about Ezekial Bodrun and promises. None of it makes any sense.”

  Jeremy tied his boots and sat back. “You’re not going to stay out of this, are you?”

  Felicity pulled off the blanket and sat up, crosslegged. “You sound like Kevin.” She folded the blanket and draped it over the back of the couch while Jeremy moved to sit beside her. He reached for her hand.

  “I don’t want you to get into something dangerous.”

  “I’m not stupid, Jeremy.”

  “You’re not, but some of the others around here are.”

  Felicity nuzzled his neck. “If you’d heard the way Sasha’s father talked about her, Jeremy, you’d want to find out what happened too. She wasn’t someone who would just be wandering around in the woods, mine or anyone else’s.”

  “Promise me you won’t do anything without telling me.” He waited for a reply. “I don’t want to worry all the time.”

  “Do you worry about me, Jeremy?”

  He turned to her, a bemused smile on his face. “Of course I do.”

  “I don’t want you to worry,” she said. But what she really wanted to say was that just hearing him tell her this made her feel so much safer. “Or Loretta.”

  “Yeah.” Jeremy turned away. “I may have to have a talk with her before she kills herself.”

  “She’s lonely. And a little scared. And Marilyn Kvorak showing up with a prospective buyer didn’t help. Anything more on that front?”

  “He’s definitely not with any of the big gas or oil companies.”

  “You were thinking of a new pipeline running across the state?”

  He nodded. “But any pipeline stuff is off the table. Besides, if they wanted to cross my land—or yours—they’d just take what they needed by eminent domain after a lot of fighting.”

  Felicity filled him in on her conversation with Handly Matthews.

  “He’s a good man. But I’ll keep checking, if only to keep Loretta from harassing Marilyn for information.”

  “Your mother’s scared about the future, Jeremy. She’s not where she expected to be at this age.”

  “Where did she expect to be?”

  Felicity ran her hand along his arm. “She probably thought she’d be a social butterfly with a passel of grandchildren.”

  They’d had this conversation before, about how his mother hared off in different directions—binge drinking, taking in stray dogs, running a political campaign for a friend—all as a way to make sense out of her life. She had four grandchildren but only one lived nearby. But the real question that festered was why had Jeremy fallen for Taylor’s mother and a marriage that lasted barely three years before she up and left. Loretta never gave up hope that things would progress between her son and Felicity, but Felicity and Jeremy had grown so comfortable in their long-term relationship that neither one seemed to think about what more they could have. The idea crossed Felicity’s mind occasionally, but then something else would come up to claim her attention and she set the question aside.

  “She was never that kind of mother.”

  “She knows that. So what? If we didn’t have dreams a little different from reality we’d never reach out for more of life. So what if she was unrealistic?”

  “My younger brother has three children. They count, don’t they?”

  “But they don’t live near her and they’re so different. I think she feels lost.”

  “Well, Taylor’s coming home next weekend, for a long weekend. That should make her happy. Daniel’s coming too, with the family. My daughter tells me she wants to talk.” Jeremy pulled a face.

  “Does Taylor know about the offer to buy your farm?”

  “No. I don’t know what her visit is all about, but it should be interesting.”

  “She didn’t give you a hint?”

  “Not a clue.” Jeremy stood up. “I thought launching a daughter followed a certain strategy, but I guess I was wrong.”

  “What strategy?” Felicity followed him to the door.

  “Give her lots of love and tell her she can do whatever she wants in life. And give her lots of role models. Like you.”

  “Now that’s a pretty good line!” Felicity leaned into his embrace. “I love it when you lie to me.”

  Ten

  On Monday morning, just after nine o’clock, Felicity crossed the street from the parking lot to Town Hall. She glanced at a window on the first floor and stopped in the middle of the street at the sight of a tall man leaning over the table where the tax assessment printout was displayed. She was late with the other half of her property taxes, and she prayed a lien hadn’t already been recorded. She veered toward the steps and headed into the building.

  The man she’d seen in the window bolted out of the assessor’s office and into the hallway, knocking back a clerk. Her arms full of folders, the clerk didn’t have a free hand to grab her glasses as they slid down her nose and off her face, dangling on their beaded chain. She fell back toward Felicity, who jumped forward and held her arms out to catch her. The man apparently didn’t notice, continuing to walk toward the stairwell leading down to the police department and storage.

  “Thanks,” the clerk said. She clutched the files closer to her chest. “Not my day, I guess. I’m just glad I didn’t drop these.”

  Felicity bit her tongue as she watched the man disappear down the stairs. “Clod. Him.”
She nodded toward the now-empty stairs. “I’m here for the bad news,” she added.

  The clerk laughed. “Taxes? We haven’t got to the liens yet, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She smiled. “Besides, Felicity, we know you’re good for it.” She winked and headed on into the office. Felicity followed her, and then went over to the table where she’d first seen the stranger in the window. The printout, organized by name, was open to a page that included her property.

  Startled by the idea that the man she saw could be Franklin Gentile, the buyer working with Marilyn, Felicity jumped back, ready to run down the stairs after him. But before she could do so she spotted him walking down the sidewalk to the intersection, where he turned left and walked out of sight.

  “Damn.”

  “You complaining about me?” Chief Kevin Algren walked up behind her.

  Felicity spun around and shook her head. “Hi, Kevin. I thought I saw someone I’ve been trying to meet. Sort of.”

  “Sort of meet? If you’re here to make your statement, go on down. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Felicity walked down to the police department. “Kevin’s on his way,” she told Padma. “Do you know who that man was who just came through here?”

  Padma looked up from the small paper sack she’d been inspecting and shook her head. “I don’t have a clue even though I’m right here in the heart of town government.” She gazed around at her empire of cast-off desks from the 1930s, stacks of old army green metal files, a row of lampshades looking for lamps, and folding metal chairs stacked in a corner. “He didn’t even stop to say hello. You here to see the chief?”

  Felicity nodded as they heard Kevin’s footsteps on the stairs. “How’s he feeling about all this?”

  “Guess! He’s miserable. I feel for the guy, I really do. He loves West Woodbury, but now that he’s at the end of his career he says the things happening these days make him feel like he’s a stranger here. He feels like he stayed too long at the party. He says—” Padma stopped to consider this. “Do people really feel that way?” She dropped the paper sack into an open drawer. “Good morning, sir.” She chirped the greeting before Chief Kevin Algren had even made it all the way into the room.

  The chief closed his office door behind Felicity and motioned her to a chair. “Don’t tell me I look sick, Felicity. I just spent an hour with the town accountant who’s trying to sell me on some kind of nature medicine.” Felicity shut her mouth. She knew better than to tell Kevin exactly what she thought of the way he looked.

  “I’m going to ask Padma to come in and type up what you have to say, but before I do, is there anything you want to tell me first?”

  Felicity shook her head, then stopped. “Oh, there is one thing.”

  “I knew it.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Go on.”

  “It’s not that bad, Kevin. Anyway, when we were looking for my dad, Pat remembered there was an old cabin back in the woods where we were searching. We looked in the cabin, just in case Dad might have been going there. Zeke owned that place. He died quite a while back, but that cabin is being taken care of. I thought someone had been there recently and I was sure I could smell something, but I couldn’t figure out what it was until much later. Anyway, after we started searching through the woods, I passed a dying squirrel.”

  “A dying squirrel?”

  “You said the medical examiner found vomit in Sasha’s mouth,” Felicity said. “But there was no vomit on her clothing or her body when we found her.”

  “So?”

  “So I think I smelled vomit in the cabin and I think she ran away and vomited in the woods and then whoever was with her, followed her and cleaned her up and left her in the woods, setting her up to look as though she just sat down to die.”

  “What’s the squirrel got to do with it?”

  “I think the squirrel ate the vomit. The poison was in the vomit.”

  “The squirrel ate the vomit?”

  “Don’t look at me like I have ten heads, Kevin.”

  “Okay, only five heads.”

  “I saw this squirrel stumbling around but I was too focused on finding my dad to pay attention. But it was weird.”

  “A squirrel.” He pushed himself away from his desk. “Let me get Padma in here. Maybe you’ll start sounding normal if someone else is listening to you.”

  “You have to check the cabin. Pat checked the firebox and he thought someone had been there in maybe the last two days, from the way the ashes felt.” She swung around in the chair as he walked to the door and pulled it open. He called for Padma.

  “So, I’m looking for a dead squirrel in how many acres? Six hundred? A thousand? Two thousand?” Kevin pointed Padma to the computer.

  “Are you going to check out the cabin?”

  “Old Zeke Bodrun’s place?” Kevin sat down again. “Will it make you happy?”

  Felicity grimaced.

  “And I’ll bring in any dead squirrels I find, too.” He told Padma to type up the statement on Sasha Glover. “Ready, Miss O’Brien?”

  Felicity managed to make it to the Pasquanata Community Home before lunch. Since her father’s foray into the larger world, she’d fretted and worried and worked herself into as much of a state as he had been in the day he bolted. She found him in the lounge watching the birds outside the window.

  “Pussy willows,” he said when she sat down.

  She checked his wardrobe on every visit and was pleased to see how well cared for he was—his clothes were always clean, the items of clothing made sense, and each item seemed to still fit. Today he wore his favorite khaki slacks and a light yellow shirt, well ironed, and a gray cardigan. She didn’t know but guessed the nurses would have removed his cold-weather jackets from the closet, to discourage any ideas of stepping outside again. But she knew that was akin to magical thinking—if he wanted to go out he would, regardless of the weather and the availability of suitable clothing.

  She leaned over him to the window to look at the pussy willows. “We have some behind the barn. I’ll cut some and bring them in. A harbinger of spring, for sure.”

  He listened to her with a vacant look, an expression of thinking about something else while waiting until something she had to say caught his interest. “You’re Lissie, come for your regular visit.”

  “Yes, Dad, I’m Lissie.”

  “I went looking for you.” He reached across and grabbed her hand. “You need a sign at the end of the driveway.”

  “A sign for Tall Tree Farm?” Felicity’s heart sank. She’d been thinking about repainting the sign during the summer. It was beginning to look a little ragged. As long as she could remember, they’d always had a sign at the end of the driveway. Perhaps there had been a time when there was no sign. Perhaps that was where he was now. This morning, she couldn’t bring herself to correct him. Let him have his reality, if it made him happy.

  He nodded. “Three words.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  “It’s special. It’s what we called it when we were hanging out together.” He lowered his voice to a whisper and looked around.

  “You and Mom called it Tall Tree Farm when you were young?”

  He wasn’t listening to her. He’d drifted off on another memory. “Perfect name. But couldn’t use it, couldn’t use it. But it’s okay now. No one will know and if they do, they can’t do anything about it. Tall Tree Farm is forever.”

  She kissed his gnarled, stiff hand and then his cheek. At first she didn’t know what he was talking about, and it didn’t matter. But then, the foray into the past and the naming of the farm began to make sense.

  “Don’t forget, Lissie. It’s forever.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  “And no one can do anything about it.”

  She shook her head, still smiling, waiting to hear what he would say next.


  “Old Zeke is gone now.” He grew sad. “A true friend.”

  “You were great pals, I heard.” Felicity was beginning to think she understood the heart of this friendship, but she could still be wrong. She wanted to be sure.

  He eyeballed her, alert and suspicious.

  “Loretta, Jeremy’s mother, told me you and Zeke were great pals when you were young, before you married Mom.” She hoped this mention of Zeke would lead her dad into a reminiscence that would shed more light on what was behind his seemingly inconsistent feelings about the Bodruns.

  “Loretta.” He relaxed and smiled at her once again. “Good-looking woman in her day. She had a little boy. Jeremy. And another one. Daniel.”

  “They’re grown up, Dad. You know them.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Good farmers too. I always liked them, Jeremy especially.”

  “I’m glad, Dad. I do too.”

  That seemed to ground him in the present, and a warm smile spread over his features. His history with Zeke Bodrun would have to wait for another visit.

  Eleven

  On Tuesday, Felicity focused on repairing their farm stand. She drew a tape measure along a plank, marked it, remeasured, and set the tape aside. She gripped the plank with one hand and held the circular saw with the other, setting it along the line. She guided the saw through the wood and let the shorter piece fall away.

  For the rest of the afternoon she cut and nailed, until the table with compartments and a roof that passed for her vegetable stand began to look sturdier than it had in years. She calculated how much produce she could display, and how many baskets she’d need around the base, to take in a certain income. And she had to make a certain income. That had become clear after her chat with the Pasquanata Community Home manager about her father’s wandering off. It was obvious the income from the CSA garden wouldn’t be enough, so she had to get serious about bringing in cash.

  By late afternoon Felicity felt she had a strong enough structure to survive any unexpected late winter storms. She pulled out her father’s trailer and leaned the stand against it until she could pull it down, letting it rest on what was little more than a wooden frame on wheels. She pulled it out to the end of the driveway and set up the stand on the cement base that had been poured years ago. Shadow explored the street in either direction, but returned within a few minutes. By then Felicity had shifted the stand into place and locked one side post onto the base.