Page 1 of Buried Roots

1

The Gnarly Tree

Thecarfishtails.

My knuckles go white as I pump the brake, but the tires have no traction. The car spins, and endless pine trees whiz by.

This is exactly how my adoptive parents died.

I don’t have time to die right now—I have work crap piled a mile high on my desk that no one else can do.

After seconds that seem like hours, everything jolts to a stop. The car is on the shoulder of the creepy back road, and I scan my body for cuts and bruises. There are none, and relief washes over me.

Looks like I’m not dying, at least, not today—the day I’m driving into a strange town under stranger circumstances.

Still stunned, I glance out the windshield. The mist wafts through the air like an infinite ghost, but I can see it up close now—the thing that caused me to veer off the road.

“It’s just a tree. Knock it off, Willow Dawson,” I mumble, but my heart isn’t listening as it thuds wildly in my chest. It’s because it knows it’s not justanytree—it’s the one that’s appeared in my night terrors for as long as I can remember. A monstrosity perched on a hill.

It’s a magnolia, which makes sense. Georgia is full of them. But this one stands alone, high in a clearing, its trunk unnaturally large. What stops my breath is the enormous branch that leans so far to one side, it appears to float like a feat of gravity.

In my nightmares, it’s always advancing, warp speed, then wrapping its limbs around me until everything goes black.

Thiscannotbe a coincidence.

It’s always eaten at me—why I’m haunted by a tree I’ve never seen. My legs feel like Jell-O as I step out of the car, so I shake them as I breathe in the thick air. It’s my first time in the South, and they, whoever they are, aren’t joking—it’s stifling in Georgia, especially in July. Shards of sunlight appear through the splitting clouds, which remind me of the stretched cotton candy from Coney Island. I have fond memories there, but that was before.

I walk around assessing the damage, my stilettos sinking into the red-clay dirt with every step. Miraculously, the vehicle looks unscathed—only the left tires are stuck in a shallow ditch. It’ll be ugly, but I can peel the car out. Pops taught me how… along with changing a flat, and all the other handy things that make me good at my job. “Happiness is dirty hands and a clean conscience, Willow,” he’d say. And, as it turns out, I’ve needed both, just to survive. I miss him so much. Every day.

Through the haze, I stare at this hellish tree on the hill above me. I’m slow to approach this hideous oddity of nature, but I have to look at it. Even though everything in me pleads not to, my feet trudge up the hill.

Its bulging roots are so widespread, the surrounding earth is knotty, tangled. My heel gets stuck, and I stumble and fall, hitting the ground with a thud. Standing and brushing off my pants, I realize my knee should be smarting, but I feel nothing.

Once I’m in front of the tree, my eyes can’t help but roam skyward—it towers over me like a gnarly monster. Something deep in my gut draws my gaze down, and I see a handmade wooden cross, weather-beaten and moss-covered, stabbed into the ground. When I kneel to study it, shivers rock my spine, and I fight to take in air.

It refuses to come.

Carved into the cross are the words, “In loving memory of our sweet Willow.”

I can’t even begin to wrap my head around what I just saw. Exactly no one wants to see her name on a cross, and, man, what a creepy introduction to the itty-bitty town of Violet Moon.

With the ache finally settling into my knee, I approach my car, and everything around me is echoey and out of focus. I just have to take one step at a time, the first being to get this car out of the ditch. Then, I need to be back on my way to sign the deed on a property. It’s my first place, and it’s one I’ve never heard of or seen before… except from the pictures on Zillow and Google Maps, which show only a grove of trees. A perfect stranger willed it to me, and it’s probably a moonshine shack—but it’smine, so I was following the GPS to the address the probate lawyer gave me, 55 Lilac Lane.

A windowless white van slows to a crawl as it swerves around me. Nerves clench in my gut as the driver pulls onto the shoulder just up ahead. A stranger driving a kidnap van in this desolate place?Hell no!I already have a raging fear of the woods.

When the driver steps out, I grip the pepper spray on my key ring. So what if he’s got a killer bod and shock of black hair? Who cares if he’s wearing a faded t-shirt and rugged jeans, like some Hallmark movie hottie? I know better than to be fooled by looks.

I check the highway, scanning for other cars. Of course, this country road is empty. When he gets closer, I see the oily black streaks on his face, the filth on his hands, and the dirt on his clothes. And he’s wearing mismatched neon socks. That has to be ironic, no? But his smile is wicked sexy when he says, “Can I help you, ma’am?”

Ma’am? Is he for real? I force a smile and a wave when I say, “No, thank you. I’ve got it.” Translation: don’t come an inch closer.

“You’ve got it?” His voice is incredulous.

“Yup. All good.”

His eyes bulge as he stops and glances at my stuck tire. “All good? Looks like you’re in a bit of a pickle.”

On closer inspection, he has muscles everywhere, and the light scruff on his carved jawbone is annoyingly sexy. Which again, will not stop me from pepper spraying his fine ass. Hello, stranger danger—in the middle of nowhere. “Pickle? Nah.”

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