Page 49 of Brewbies
He’d threaded a rope the diameter of a baseball bat through a hole Grandpa Townsend had drilled what must have been a million years ago. After securing it with a washer and bolt the size of his own fist, he moved one scoot to the left to secure the second one.
He’d found out the property had slipped out of his grasp when his mom had the old swing delivered to his shop with a note:
I know this was important to you, so I took it down before closing on the sale. XX, Mom.
What he’d read?
I sold your dream out from under you. Here’s a swing no one but you wanted. XX, Mom.
She’d never taken his plans seriously. Neither had his father, his coaches in high school and/or college, his handful of semi-serious relationships, his coworkers, or his friends.
Somehow, he’d allowed those dreams to linger in an empty lot with an empty swing playing a lonely pendulum for the passing of time.
After glancing over to the Airstream both shadowed and gleaming in the nearly full moon, Ethan took a moment to listen to the night.
The birds had all gone to roost, but the wind still carried the scent of new blooms and a hint of wood smoke.
It was like this particular night was a gift from somewhere else—maybe from a universe that understood he was trying to reclaim something vanished.
Or maybe find something he’d been missing all along.
Understanding and empathy weren’t incredibly forthcoming in his experience, which was why he’d often found himself in this particular tree when he felt lost.
Besides, brooding was well done on a beautiful spring night in the Pacific Northwest with a star-strewn sky above him and an old oak beneath him, lending its sturdy branches to hold up his bulky frame made weightier with heavy questions.
So many people found solace in nature when faced with problems.
But to him, the acres of land on the corner of Highway 101 and the Townsend Harbor Tree Tunnel had been his refuge.
A crossroads,his grandpa had said.People used to knowthat is where you go when you need direction.
Crickets chirped in perfect harmony with the hooting of owls and the murmuring of Raven Creek. Frogs croaked and stars shimmered in an endless night sky, free from smog or light pollution.
Steeping in the fresh fragrance of petrichor that hung in the air like a sweet fog, Ethan closed his eyes and tilted his head back to the sky, feeling like he could breathe for the first time in—
“What the fuck are youdoingup there?”
Startled by Darby’s sudden question, Ethan dropped his wrench so he could use two hands to keep him from falling out of the tree.
It landed in the soft moss below with a mutedwhump.
Gravel crunched beneath fancy slippers as Darby strode from the shadow of her doorway out into the night, her kimono flaring out behind her like a cape. Moonlight painted blood-red shadows in her hair and gilded her eyes like diamond-cut glass.
Bracing himself for an unwanted confrontation, Ethan squeezed his eyes shut, awaiting the barbed tongue lashing that would accompany the pin-up fantasy exterior.
The chalky sound of gravel gave way to soft squishes of the mossy ground set back from the road. The stretch of meadow where people on road trips would pull over and let their kids and dogs out of the car to frolic by the creek and climb this old oak.
Quiet stretched out long enough that he cracked one eye open.
Darby stood directly beneath him, fingers tracing a spackled groove in the swing with uncharacteristic reverence. “Did you make this?” she breathed.
“No,” he answered automatically, before pulling the cord on his stalled brain motor a few times. “I mean. Kinda.”
She tilted her head back to look up at him, and he felt his breath hitch as he took in the sight of her. The way the moonlight played on the curves of her body was intoxicating.
And he shouldn’t be noticing.
“It was the first thing my grandpa let me help him make in the woodshop,” he said, mostly surprised that he’d revealed something personal to her. “It hung here since my eighth birthday until…” He cleared his throat, not wanting to beat a dead horse on such a nice night.
