The Kissing Tree

by Karen Witemeyer

  He did not come.

  Rain from a purpling sky began to pelt her, driven in the growing wind.

  “Please,” she said, her voice cracking the embodiment of anguish she felt. How often had she prayed that word? Asked as a girl to take flight from this place. Begged for God to let Danny come home. Pleaded, then, for her brother’s death to be untrue. And finally, after time had stemmed the flow of her wild grief, asked, as in the eye of a storm, for the honor of building Danny’s cottage in his stead.

  And now the plea flew from her again, embodying all of those desperate cries. “Please,” she groaned, falling to her knees as her shoulders shook and her tears mingled with the pelting rain.

  “Please,” she whispered. To the horse—­but more so, to heaven. For help. Direction. Salvation from this mire she knelt in, and the mire of her confusion in this life.

  In the distance, she heard a voice fighting through the wind. “Hannah!”

  She scrambled to her feet. Methuselah, too, stood at attention, his ears angled forward. A posture she hadn’t seen on the gentle beast in years. And there, there on the horizon he’d watched with wild eyes, came the figure of a soldier.

  Not Danny. But one with the same courage, the same strength of heart, the same compassion.

  “Luke!” she cried, hope shooting through her whole being, straight down to her fingertips. She jumped, waving. “Luke!”

  And he was there. Running full force, wrapping his hand around hers, around the lead, and bending straight into the force of the coming storm, horse plodding faithfully behind.

  It was a blur then. The battle with the barn door as they pulled it open together, despite the angry protest of the fighting wind, and set the faithful old beast free inside. It was the best shelter for him, and he’d weathered tornadoes here before. But when she and Luke latched themselves inside, too, it was to see the view through the old knothole that the tornado was headed straight for them. Growing larger than life, its force tearing through everything in its path.

  “We have to go,” she said. “There’s a storm cellar at the cottage. It’s closer than Gran’s house. If we go through the other door—”

  Luke looked at her, his face a meeting of strength and desperation as his eyes drank her in. “Yes,” he said. “Go.”

  He made for the horse, and Hannah loved him for it. But she knew there wasn’t time. “Come on,” she hollered, the roar of the storm growing louder. “He’ll know what to do!” It wasn’t ideal—­it would have been best if Methuselah could have stayed in the barn—­but letting him run free was his last hope.

  That phrase—­last hope—­pummeled her with as much force as the whipping wind. With a mighty burst out through the far end of the barn, the three of them flew. Methuselah dashed over the hill beyond the old oak. Luke yelled Hannah’s name with more intensity than she’d ever heard from the man, his eyes wild as he pulled her to himself. A screaming force passing behind her pressed her into him, and she looked to see a rogue, shredded piece of a tin roof spin past the very spot she had just stood.

  Their eyes met for an instant, both of their shoulders heaving. He took her hand, and they ran with everything they had for the cottage. Branches flew and wooden shingles catapulted and the air pressure around them dropped like a vacuum ready to devour them as they ducked and dodged and pressed on to outrun the impossible monster at their backs, the storm’s outcry so loud they could not speak, could not hear each other, until they’d reached Leven House, standing with its little turret and centered knob. Her heart hurt, thinking of it facing this, all of its carefully kept elements in dire danger.

  It took them both pulling with every ounce of strength in them and more to open the storm cellar door. Luke held it, propping himself between it and the ground as Hannah dashed down the stairs and looked up in time to watch him leap. The door slammed shut with sickening force—­and darkness swallowed them whole.

  ten

  Luke knew this place. He had been here before. In the cold . . . in the dark . . . the thought of a soul named Hannah keeping him conscious.

  Only—­was he conscious? His head pounded something fierce, and an odd memory of something slamming in the darkness assaulted him. Had it been the plane? He’d been shot down, in the snow. The tree line of the Ardennes in the distance, silhouetted against the stars.

  He opened his eyes and strained to see it, but saw only oppressive pitch black. Some great hollow howl sounded, a ravenous predator on the prowl.

  He knew he was in the snow. But when he pictured it, it was a field of sun-­kissed white fluff, not the diamond-­dusted drifts of a barren Belgian winter.

  Past and present wrestled as his mind waded through visions of war and visions of watermelon festivals. Of plotting out reconnaissance and plotting out footfalls of a dance with a girl in his arms.

  “Hannah,” he said into the darkness.

  “I’m here.” The voice was so sweet it rolled right into that tangle of consciousness like a beam of light.

  It was the voice of the girl. The real, live, breathing and blue-­eyed Hannah. Not the faceless pen pal he’d regarded . . . but the woman he loved.

  “Keep well, Luke,” she said. His words, on her lips. The ones he’d penned with his last ounce of energy on the brink of death—­calling him back to life now. “You’ll be just fine.” And then, in a whisper, “Please, Lord.”

  He hoisted himself up to a sitting position and heard the strike of a match. It flickered into life, casting bouncing shadows around him. It was a small space—­an unfinished cellar, by the looks of it. Hard-­packed dirt on all sides, the spice of the damp earth bringing clarity to his muddled thoughts. Tendrils and gnarls of tree roots protruded from the corner nearest them. He ran his hand over them, trying to orient himself.

  “We’re under the cottage,” he said, feeling the pinch of his forehead, the ache behind it. “Is—­is that right?”

  “Yes,” Hannah spoke.

  “These are from the old oak, then,” he said.

  “The Kissing Tree itself,” Hannah said, doing something with the candle she’d just lit. Securing it to something. “I didn’t realize its roots reached so far. Part of the reason for how small the storm cellar is. When we hit the roots, we stopped digging. Didn’t want to harm the old tree, though I doubt anything in this world could do that creature in. It’s a tree for the ages.”

  “It is, at that.” It had ushered him beneath its branches, like some portal between the inn and the cottage, depositing him right in the middle of Hannah Garland’s life.

  He nodded, then raised a hand to his pounding head. “The tornado,” he said. “Has it gone?”

  Hannah turned, a single candlestick wobbling in its tarnished holder in her hand. She steadied it, inclining her ear toward the storm cellar door at the top of the steep wooden stairs.

  “I’m afraid not,” she said. “Sounds like it’s still near. It won’t be long, though, unless it changes course again.” She paused a moment, grave concern etching her delicate features. “You took a fall, Luke. When the wind slammed the door on you. You were gone only a minute or two, but it was so loud.” She neared, smelling of honeysuckle and sunshine and wind, kneeling beside him. Reaching up and running a thumb over his brow. “Are you alright? It must hurt somethin’ awful.”

  Right now all he could register was pounding in his head, and pounding in his chest at her nearness. He would be alright, once he spoke what he had to say.

  What he had to say. His hand flew to his shirt pocket, a sudden vision of the papers he’d carted like a fool from across the world being shredded to pieces by a Texas tornado.

  His pocket crinkled in reply, and he dropped his shoulders in relief. Lifting his hand, he took hers from where it rested, still, on his face.

  “Hannah,” he said. “I—I know I’m not much for words.”

  She dropped her gaze, a smile spreading. That smile . . .

  “We’re a fine pair, then, aren’t we? My mouth runnin’ a
mile a minute all the time. Gran says I should let you get a word in edgewise once in a while, and I know she’s right.”

  Luke laughed. “I’d be glad if you never stopped talking, Hannah. But . . . there is something I should say.”

  She pursed her lips, nodding earnestly, her eyes wide as saucers. He wished he could take her in his arms and kiss those lips that liked to run a mile a minute with words. But first, his turn for words.

  “I have a confession,” Luke said. “When Danny used to talk about you—­about the sister who stayed back home, kept the farm running, and was the lifeblood of this place—I never pictured you right.”

  “You pictured me? Well, do tell, Mr. Hampstead, what did you picture?”

  “Someone . . . steady. Reserved. And . . .” He felt embarrassed for this, fearing it would embarrass her. “Someone much older than Danny.”

  “Ha! I don’t know which of those is most preposterous. Although according to Oak Springs standards, twenty-­four is well and solid in the spinster realm, so maybe you weren’t so far off.”

  “That night I told you about in Belgium,” he said, and shuddered at the thought of that biting, numbing cold. “Christmas Eve, when my plane was shot down. I nearly froze to death that night.” He shook his head. No, it was more than that. “I should have frozen that night. By all counts. The doctors couldn’t figure out, later, how I’d survived. All I know is, with the night so bright and the snow so cold and the village lights flickering like they were, I could only think of one person I wished to talk to.” He drew in a breath, shuddering around the ache. The longing. “You.”

  “But—­you hardly knew me.”

  He reached inside his pocket, pulling out that scrap of paper, scrawled with his frozen-­fingered scratch. Placing it in her hands, he tapped it.

  “I knew if I fell asleep—­if I surrendered to the cold, that would be it. So I did the only thing I could think of to stay awake. I wrote to you.”

  Hannah held the paper, slipping both hands around it as if she’d just been handed a treasure of glass, and she meant not to shatter it.

  “It’s not much. I could hardly think—­and could hardly move my fingers.” He laughed dryly. “It took me all night to write those few lines. But it—­that is, you—­kept me awake. And that kept me alive.”

  She looked at him then, eyes welling with tears. “Can I . . . ?” She lifted the paper ever so slightly.

  Luke nodded, the throbbing in his head beginning to quiet.

  She opened the paper. Traced the words with tender touch.

  “‘Dear Hannah,’” she said.

  Luke straightened, alarmed. “You don’t have to read it aloud.”

  Hannah shot him a look. “If you think that a man can carve a letter out of his very own frozen being and carry it by hand half a world away, and then build a house just so he can deliver it—­and not have that letter be read out loud—­then you are sorely mistaken.”

  He held up his hands in surrender, warmed by her proclamation.

  She cleared her throat. “‘Dear Hannah,’” she began again. “‘How are you?’” She peeked above the top edge of the letter. “If I were writing to this man in return,” she said, “I would tell him I’m just fine, thank you, thanks to the rescue work of a friendly neighbor man who saved me from a gargantuan tornado. Now, carrying on . . . ‘I want to thank you. For so many things. For sharing your brother with us—­the best friend I ever knew. For giving me a place to send the broken things of this world, for safekeeping. I don’t know what you’re doing with the sketches, but from all that Danny told me of you, I know they’ll be safe. Honored, just by being cherished. Not a lot of people take the time to do that, you know. To witness broken places, and to take the time to simply see them. Remember them. It’s a very hope-­filled thing, you know. It matters, and I bet it seeps into every bit of your life, too. I don’t know if I’ll make it any farther in this life than tonight—’”

  She broke off, her voice cracking. Her chin dimpled as she pursed her lips around unreleased tears. “Wish you’d tell this man not to talk like that,” she said, sniffling around a manufactured laugh.

  Luke shook his head. “He should’ve died that night, and he knows it. But he’s thankful he didn’t . . . and he has a lot more to say to the woman he was writing to.”

  She tilted her head, her golden hair a beautiful mess where it’d been pulled from her braided halo by tornado-­force wind. What was it he’d labeled her in his head, when first he’d encountered her at the Feed and Dime? “Tornado girl,” he muttered.

  “Pardon?”

  “That’s what I called you when I met you, before I knew your name. You were blustering all over that store, handing me Jerry’s snaffle bits and who knows what else, and I thought—­she’s a tornado.”

  She nodded. “Destructive, upending, chaotic, and leaving a wake of debris. Sounds about right.”

  “No. Not that. I just mean—­you have a way of tearing through a man’s life and ripping the gray sky away so the sun can break through. Since I came here, Hannah—­knowing you, spending days with you, building something good and life-­honoring with you—­it’s done something to me. When I left the Ardennes and the snow, I was frozen straight through. Stayed that way long after I’d rehabilitated, been transferred to different hospitals, been discharged and shipped back to a homeland where I had no home. I wandered into your town and you collided with me and it just cracked that ice clean away. You’ve been light, and warmth. You’ve been everything real. Honest and true. You have dreams bigger than the entire state of Texas, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you were hiding wings in there somewhere, and might just break them out and fly off to bring that warmth to the rest of the world one of these days. But—”

  He stopped, wincing at the pain in his head, the ache in his heart. He had laid out everything in him. For better or for worse, he had to finish that. “Could you finish the letter?”

  Hannah watched him as if she meant never to tear her gaze from him, but nodded at last. Outside, pelting rain—­or perhaps hail?—­pounded upon the door, punctuating the sheer agony of unspoken truth. The storm door trembled.

  “‘I don’t know if I’ll make it any farther in this life than tonight, but if I do, I hope to thank you in person one day. Sincerely, Luke Ham—’”

  Hannah swiped tears, which spilled freely down her cheeks. “I don’t know any Luke Ham,” she said, again trying to make light of her tears.

  “That was when the townspeople came,” he said. “When dawn broke. No time to write the rest of my name.” He eased forward, taking her hands in his, catching her tears. “I should go back and fix that,” he said. “I should go back and add a few important details, too.”

  Hannah sniffed, offering a half smile. “Oh?”

  “I should write—I hope to thank you in person one day. And every day, Hannah. I’m not much for words, but these words are very much a part of me, if you will permit me to speak them.” He lifted a hand, breaking away from the imagined text of the letter and speaking the rest right here, right now, right between them. An offering of himself, just as she had given so much of herself into his life. “I love you, Hannah.”

  The hail stopped. The door lay still, all quiet but the beat of two hearts melding into one.

  Hannah looked at him, stunned. Then shook her head, gesturing with the letter clutched tight in her hand. “But—I’m just me. And you’re Luke Hampstead.”

  He smiled. “So you told me. And you’re Hannah Garland.”

  “But you—I mean, I’m just—I mean, I just live here and burn biscuits and swing a hammer and make a general mess of things, and you—­you—­you fly those skies and dance to ‘Stardust’ and help Gran and basically save the world, quite literally, surviving snowstorms in Belgium and gathering up broken places for safekeeping, and I just—I don’t see how—”

  He watched those lips run a mile a minute. Felt the angst of her heart and cherished every bit of it—­and in one
motion, dearly hoped that in quieting one, he might quiet the other for her. He lifted a hand, smoothing those storm-­swept hairs of hers, soaking in the feeling of holding this brilliant mind and tender soul—­and he kissed her. Right in the middle of her stream of words, he kissed her and drank in her warmth and assured her, without a word, that in all the world, Hannah was his dream.

  His hand cradled the back of her head as their foreheads met, their own silence joining that of the dissipating storm above.

  Her fingers came up around his, lacing themselves into his in a weaving that would never be undone. “I love you, too, Luke.”

  He pulled back to behold her, candlelight dancing around her as if it had been drawn from the sky by the roots surrounding them and scattered in dust to light this moment.

  Against all reason, Luke wished to stay here. Right in this moment, in the dark, holding Hannah Garland’s heart close to his. For when they emerged . . . please, God. He didn’t know what to pray. If the cottage was damaged—­it would destroy her. He couldn’t bear to think of it. Hannah, who had lost so much already.

  And yet if it had withstood the storm, what reason could he give, now, for staying? The work was done. His job was waiting in New York. And without it, he had nothing to offer the girl who deserved the whole world.

  eleven

  Hannah paused at the top of the cellar stairs. With one mighty push, she would have that door open, and there was no turning back from whatever awaited them. A quick look back at Luke showed the same trepidation on his face, though when he saw her looking, he gave a reassuring smile.

  God bless that man. Bolstered, she took the plunge into the twilight above. As she turned in a slow near circle, her hand pressed to her heart, the ache of what she saw before her digging deep, so deep. Snapped branches strewn about like pick-up sticks. An eerie stillness lingered, air laced with the smell of thunderstorm mixed with fresh-­cut grass, spiced soil, fresh lumber. All such comforting things, on their own . . . but in the wake of a tornado louder than a train and with a thousand times more force—­they brought heaviness to the atmosphere.