Page 51 of Just Can't Fall for the Enemy

I stroked the rough bark, examining it in detail. These trees could live up to five hundred years, but this one had been toppled in a violent storm the same year as my parents’ funeral. Was that why I felt drawn to this particular spot and not the cemetery when I thought about my parents? Because it made me feel closer to them?

I followed the log with my eyes to its broken stump, then straightened. Something tiny and green had broken through the soil at its base. I stood and walked over, bending down to get a good look. A new western larch coming up from the same patch of soil. A little late in the season for a tender shoot to be growing, but it looked like a stubborn little thing. Maybe it would survive. Maybe in another ten years it would be tall enough to provide shade for my visits.

The thought of sitting right here in another decade on the twentieth anniversary of my parents’ deaths plucked at my injured heart. Who would I be then? What would I accomplish before that day came?

I stared at the little shoot struggling to survive and felt a strange kinship to it. It felt like my heart’s struggle to love again. Alan had made me retreat into the dark sanctuary of fear for a long time. Tanner had coaxed me out of it, at least for a little while. Surely that meant something, but I couldn’t tell what.

I took my seat again and drew in a few deep, long breaths. Then I did something I should have done a long time before. I stopped ordering my heart not to feel and instead started to listen.

And what my heart told me stunned me into silence.

Tanner or no Tanner, I was ready to love again. Trust again.

Dreamagain.

I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life corralling people away from moose and directing bear traffic and sawing apart fallen trees. Anyone could do that. It would be easy enough to try and preserve what the earth already offered, to keep it the same against forces that wanted to tear it apart. But that felt neutral, safe. The same. Beige. Blah. Like Carmen, I wanted to splash some color onto life. I wanted to make the worldbetter.Save a species. Make a difference. Like this tree, I wanted to leave something new behind.Educate people. And I wanted to do it while seeing the world.

Maybe Tanner and I weren’t so different after all.

I remembered the thrill inside when we’d kissed, how his hand felt against my back and his full,genuinesmile. Surely it hadn’t allbeen a lie for him. But whether it had been or not, I knew it hadn’t been a lie for me, and that was significant.

It felt like a little green shoot inside, ready to grow into a new tree.

And as fragile as it felt right now, I was happy to see it.

Twenty

Jill calledas I walked through the hospital, looking for the right room number. Annoyed, I sent it to voicemail. I found the room and opened the heavy hospital door, tapping gently on the wood. Ben sat on a chair next to the bed, bouncing his toddler daughter on his lap. Emily sat at the opposite side, her large shirt not quite hiding the baby bump. All three smiled as I entered and closed the door.

Between them, Mom lay asleep in the bed. She had no less than four monitors around her with IV lines and who knew what else connected to her frail body, thin beneath the sheet. Her bright-blonde hair, which she’d dyed ever since I was a child, held more strands of silver than usual. Her eyes were closed, her chest moving slowly. Her skin had a pale-green tint that made me nervous.

“She’s resting,” Ben said. He stood to hand his daughter to Emily over the bed, then approached me. “Let’s talk outside.”

“There’s nothing you can say out there that I don’t already know,” Mom said, her eyes still closed. Her voice was quiet, but the strength behind it eased my worry a bit.

“Heart attack,” Ben said, shooting Mom a grim smile. “An 86 percent blockage in her artery. They put a stent in shortly after I called you. They also fixed that faulty valve. Or I guess they didn’t fix it but put some kind of ring inside it they’re going to keep an eye on. Supposedly the valve defect and the chest pain today are unrelated. I was too relieved to hear she was okay to remember all the science behind it.”

I felt my entire body relax. “So she’ll be all right.”

“About a week to recover at home, maybe two. She’ll have to take blood thinners to prevent clots from forming at the stent site, but yes. It sounds like she’ll be better off than before.”

I slapped my brother on the shoulder. “I’m glad you were here.”

“Me too.”

He stepped aside so I could approach Mom, who opened her eyes as I drew near. They looked a lighter blue than I remembered.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Where’s my boy? All I see is a man.”

I chuckled. “You saw me over Christmas, remember?”

“Of course I remember. But something’s changed since then. I can see it.” She reached out, and I took her hand.

Emily and Ben exchanged a look. “We should probably get Kylie to bed,” Emily said.

Ben nodded. “Tanner, you okay to stay with her tonight?”

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