Ghost of Willow's Past

by M. L. Buchman

  Reading the diary to her mother, they’d finally discovered the origin of the yearly visit tradition. Amy hadn’t brought a gift for the tree this year, and with it cut down and gone, she didn’t know if she should.

  “Sorry,” Dusty shook his head like a wet dog. “My mind has gone walkabout.”

  “I lost my mom five days ago.” Again, words she’d never intended to speak had slipped out into the world as if someone had given them a nudge.

  Dusty sat bolt upright and turned to her. No longer relaxed back on the bench, his whole attention was on her.

  She waited for it, for the words she’d so come to hate. But he didn’t speak. He didn’t stare at her, though he was looking at her.

  Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Say it!”

  “No. I remember how angry I was at every person who said how sorry they were. It was so empty. Why would I go out of my way to make you angry at me?”

  Amy shifted on the cold bench, wishing she’d worn another layer against the chill of the day.

  “Who are you?”

  His grin was easy. “I guess that’s a step up from yesterday’s ‘What are you?’ ”

  Had she really been so rude? Well, yes, she had.

  “Master Sergeant of the 160th SOAR at your service.”

  “Which battalion?”

  That stopped him. Now he really was staring at her.

  “The fifth.” His voice was now careful.

  Amy knew why. SOAR was very secretive. A civilian knowing about the fifth battalion must be unnerving him a bit. She decided to keep her own military background to herself a little longer. She couldn’t resist seeing if she could make him squirm. After all, he had stalked her this morning, sort of.

  “What do you fly in?”

  “DAP.” He bit the word off.

  The Direct Action Penetrator, the nastiest and most powerful rotorcraft in the world.

  “Beale or Henderson?”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “Master Sergeant Amelia Patterson, I flew with Emily Beale in the 101st when she was still a Screaming Eagle. I just finished my five years in the service prerequisite before I could apply to SOAR. I report for testing next week.” She held out her hand.

  When he didn’t respond, she reached out and took his nerveless hand and shook it. Slowly his fingers came to life and curled about hers.

  Despite the layers of both of their gloves, she easily remembered the feel of his warm strong fingers covering hers.

  He didn’t release his hold as they talked.

  She didn’t try to make him let go though the sun moved far across the sky.

  5

  Willow listened. It was harder, took more effort. No leaves, no branches, no trunk left. All that now remained of Willow ranged deep beneath the soil. The recent bite of the saw, the tearing of the stump both too painful to recall. But Willow still heard, still felt. He asked the ground to give up its heat and Amy and Dusty talked long through the cold day. It was warm only around that one lone bench in the Rose Garden.

  # # #

  “A friendly face, thank god!” Dusty was deep in packing boxes when Amy dropped by.

  “How’s it going?”

  He surveyed the damage. Bags of clothes for Goodwill lined one side of the living room. Bags of garbage lined the other. Boxes of books to take down to the used counter at Powell’s bookstore blocked the couch. He’d kept his father’s gardening books and the travel-picture books his mother had collected.

  “Okay, I guess. I’m pretty much done. Anything that’s too hard, I figure that I’m just not ready to let go of yet. Thankfully, this place is really small, so there aren’t too many of those decisions.” There’d been hundreds, though it felt like thousands of them, but the passing three years had given him some time to deal with the pain of loss. He’d make sure to offer to help Amy, so that she didn’t have to face her mother’s past while the wound of loss still bled.

  “I’ve sworn that I’m going to sleep in the big bed tonight, but now I don’t know.”

  He watched Amy as she hung her winter coat on a bronze hook by the door and moved to inspect the progress he’d made. She moved as if this were a military inspection, he followed two steps behind. He could see by her nods that she approved of what he’d kept. Some things she inspected more carefully, those that fit stories he’d told yesterday, others that fit stories not yet told. It was a finely honed and much appreciated assessment. He felt better with each considered nod. Hell, he felt better every single minute they were together.

  The master bedroom had a pair of walnut dressers, a small desk, and a queen-size bed with fresh flannel sheets and a faded quilt. Two of his mother’s oil paintings of the Rose Garden and a small collection of roses his father had pressed in glass hung on the otherwise bare walls.

  She continued her silent inspection and led them into his old bedroom. He’d purged the kid crap long ago. Now it was mostly books and part of his old comic book collection. Some drawings he’d made that his mother had liked enough that he’d pinned them to the wall half a lifetime ago. They weren’t half bad, considering.

  “Here.” She picked up the couple of dinged-up Frisbees he’d kept from his days of playing Ultimate and handed them to him. She also took the two pillows and added that to what he was holding. She moved about the room picking up odds and ends and piling them in his arms.

  Then she moved to unpin the art.

  “Hey!”

  “Shh. It’s all right.”

  He wasn’t quite sure how it would be all right, but he subsided and watched as she gently took them down.

  She gathered the art carefully, “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Where?” Dusty was feeling a bit dense.

  She nodded her head back toward the short hall then led him into his parents’ bedroom.

  He stood there with his arms full of his old belongings.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  She set the art on the foot of the bed. Then she took his parents’ pillows and tossed them out into the hall.

  “Your pillows go there. The rest is up to you to figure out.” She turned back to his old drawings, spread them out across the quilt and then inspected the room’s walls.

  He started with the pillows. Set some comic books on an empty bookshelf. He dropped his sketch books and drawing pencils on the small desk. He glanced at Amy and then flipped the sketchbook open to a page he’d worked on while unable to sleep most of last night and set it back on the desk.

  When he was done she told him to go get his bathroom stuff and move it into the tiny bath off the master bedroom.

  After he’d finished, he leaned against the door jamb and watched Amy.

  She’d worn jeans and a tight turtleneck that made her a pleasure to watch as she reached to pin each piece of art onto the wall.

  He couldn’t believe how much he enjoyed this woman. Not her beauty or elegance. Okay, not just her beauty and elegance; she truly had turned his head and his heart completely around. Things he’d avoided for years simply made sense in her presence.

  He looked about the room. For the first time in three years it felt right. His mother’s art now mixed with his own. Bits of his collection of science fiction and thrillers now leaned against his dad’s gardening books.

  Amy simply swept him away. The woman was impossible to resist.

  Nor did he torture himself by doing so.

  He slipped up behind her as she noticed the open sketchbook.

  He wrapped his hands around her waist in time to feel the shock of an indrawn breath. He laid a kiss on her neck between her turtleneck and soft hair.

  “Is that me?” she whispered.

  He nuzzled her neck again and ran his teeth over her earlobe where it just peeked out of her hair. Then
he looked down over her shoulder at the charcoal sketch. Her face wasn’t drawn from the front. He’d drawn her looking off to the side, as if only just noticing the artist. Her expression reflected a mixture of sadness and the very first hint of a smile. He’d set out to capture her beautiful features, and instead captured her shifting mood. He could still see a woman who had cried at the loss of a tree, but also the woman whose natural state was a quiet joy.

  “Best I could do anyway.”

  “It’s wonderful.”

  “It’s a start.” He hadn’t had as much fun as trying to draw her face in a long time. “You know, I can think of one more thing to help make this room mine.”

  She turned in his arms and didn’t argue as he lay her upon the quilt and began making love to her.

  6

  Willow rested a little deeper into the dark soil, old roots slowly turning back into the earth itself. But Willow was aware of the bench where Amelia and Hiroshi had kissed and cried each year. And Willow had watched as Amy and Dusty sat, kissing and laughing, the sound trickling into the soil and healing the old pains.

  # # #

  Amy had left his bed reluctantly this morning and returned to her own apartment to face cleaning out her mother’s life. Knowing she was dying, her mother had dealt with most of it, but what remained was still too much. Amy had never felt so helpless.

  Half an hour later Dusty had arrived bearing a dozen red roses under one arm, and boxes and garbage bags under the other. He didn’t go until all that remained was the cleaning and deciding where to store her own meager belongings. They were all hers now. Maybe she’d ship them to Fort Campbell for lack of anywhere better.

  Amy knocked on Dusty’s door and waited, ignoring the pleasant tingle running up and down her nerves.

  Dusty’s invitation hadn’t been a casual, “Hey, want to come over for dinner?”

  Instead, as he left, he’d slipped a card among the roses. The note had read: “Master Sergeant Dustin James hopes that Master Sergeant Amelia Patterson will join him for a casual Christmas Eve dinner this evening at six.” Dustin? Odd that she felt so close to him, had slept with him, and hadn’t even known his full name.

  The invitation didn’t leave her a lot of choice, unless she really wanted to disappoint him. She considered that and decided she didn’t want any other choice anyway.

  He’d said casual, so, after trying on three different dresses she’d selected dark green slacks and a red silk top. Her hair was too short for her to do anything other than wash it, and she’d never been a fan of makeup. Casual he asked for, casual he’d get.

  When he opened the door, she simply stepped into his arms. He turned her just enough to close the door and held her tight. Had she ever found a place she’d been happier than in Dustin’s arms? Not a one that she could think of as she breathed in the wonderful smell of him. Man and…

  “Is that roast beef?”

  “Not mine, though I can cook a mean one. I went down to Elephant Deli. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and a treat for dessert. I did make the peas with those little onions myself.”

  “From frozen.”

  “Only the best for Amy.”

  She laughed and slid back into his arms.

  “So, tell me more about your parents’ son, Dustin. He strikes me as an interesting chap.”

  “Well, there was a young boy named Dusty. He had a silent father who loved three things in life: his wife, his son, and his garden.” Dusty led her toward the table in the living room. It was now cozy and friendly. While she’d been cleaning her mother’s place, he must have been hauling everything out. “And Dusty had a mother who loved laughing.”

  7

  Willow waited. For almost a hundred years, every Christmas Eve someone had come. Willow waited, hoping. Old roots full of broken dreams could do no more.

  # # #

  “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.

  About the Author

  M. L. Buchman has over 35 novels and an ever-expanding flock of short stories in print. His military romantic suspense books have been named Barnes & Noble and NPR “Top 5 of the Year,” Booklist “Top 10 of the Year,” and RT “Top 10 Romantic Suspense of the Year.” In addition to romantic suspense, he also writes contemporaries, thrillers, and fantasy and science fiction.