“Just let me explain.”

“Oh, you’ll get your chance, don’t you worry. But you can sit out there and stew for the night.” Her slippers slide across the worn wood plank floor as she shuffles back to take her seat.

“They know you don’t have a phone to call the police,” I mutter. Neither do I right now. Mine is sitting in my purse in Amber’s car, where I left it.

“Don’t matter.” She goes back to rocking and sewing, as if she can’t hear the heavy footfalls back and forth across the front porch.

“How long do you think they’ll stay out there for?”

She doesn’t miss a beat. “All night.” She gestures with a nod up at a picture above the old piano in the corner. A boy of maybe nine stands in the center of the barn, his cowboy hat on, a long stick in his hand and his shoulders pulled back. Dark eyes pierce the person behind the camera. “That’s Gabe, there.” She chuckles. “After Earl attacked me, I mostly stayed in my room. Stopped going down to see the horses for . . . a good three years. Being in that barn was too hard.

“Every day, Gabe would track down my father and ask him when I’d be back. He didn’t understand at the time. My father just kept telling him, ‘Not today.’ But people talk around this town and I guess Gabe must have started hearing things. What things, I can’t imagine because I didn’t tell anyone anything. I refused to talk to a soul about it. I guess they just started making things up on their own.

“Anyway, one morning, my father came down to the barn and he found little Gabe pacing up and down the center of the aisle. When he asked him what he was doing, Gabe told him he was on guard for bad guys. That was in June, just after school let out, and every single day for that summer, Gabe paced up and down.

“Eventually, I started going down to the barn again. I missed being around the horses. I couldn’t breathe, those first few steps inside bringing the demons with them. But then I saw the path Gabe had worn into the floor. If you look hard enough today, you’ll still see it.” She turns her focus back to her quilt. “I don’t think Gabe could be anything other than what he is.”

She flips the quilt around on her lap and reaches for her signature black tree, already cut out and ready to be stitched on.

“Why the tree?”

She doesn’t answer right away, her focus on positioning and pinning it in place, and I finally assume she’s ignoring me.

“It was one of the first days of warm weather after an unusually cold winter. I was fifteen, and I decided I’d pull my bike out of the garage and go for a ride down the road before dinner. Just to the other end of our fields. It’d be too dark if I waited until after.” She switches out the red thread on her needle for black. “I didn’t think anything of it when I saw Earl’s truck pull over on the side of the road ahead of me. I didn’t think anything of it when he told me that he had found the perfect tree to climb nearby . . .”

I hug my knees tighter to my body, listening to Ginny reveal to me what I know she hasn’t told another living soul.

“When I realized what he wanted—what he thought I wanted—and I tried to run . . . he got really mad. Irrationally so. Turns out he wasn’t such a kind, nice man, after all. He had a very dark side.” She pauses. “It wasn’t until he was about halfway through that I noticed the big white oak tree watching over us. So I started focusing on that, instead. On its height, and its bare branches. Pretending that I was just lying in the grass on any regular spring day, and that if I watched closely enough, I’d get to see it wake up; I’d see the leaf buds sprout.” She shifts a pin out of the way of her needle. “It made it easier to deal with.”

“What happened to Earl?”

Her nostrils flare with a deep inhale. “He just stood for the longest time, staring at me as I lay in the grass, crying, a dazed look on his face. Then I watched him head toward his truck. I thought he was leaving. I wasn’t in any shape to pick myself up and run. But he didn’t leave. He reached into the back of his truck,” Ginny makes the hand motion as if reenacting it, sending shivers down my back, “for some rope. I thought that that was it. I was a goner. He was going to kill me right there, under that big tree. He walked past me without a word, slung the rope over his shoulder, and began climbing the tree, all the way up to the first branch. And then I watched him hang himself from it.” Her mouth crests downward in a frown. “He was an unstable fellow. History of mental illness. Of course, my father had no idea about that when he hired him. But I guess when Earl’s own demons went to sleep and he realized what he had just done to me, his guilt got the better of him.”

“Oh God, Ginny . . .” I mutter softly.

She goes on. “When time for dinner came and went and it started getting dark, my father came looking for me. He found my bike and the truck on the side of road. It wasn’t hard to spot a two-hundred-and-forty-pound body swinging from the tree. That’s how he found me. Lying under that tree.

“I guess you could say I lucked out. There was a very brief police investigation. I refused to give them any details. I figured they didn’t need more than what they had between the body and my medical report from the doctors. There was no point. Earl was dead. They couldn’t punish him. The most unfortunate thing about the entire situation is that the great big tree—that gave me my escape, that helped serve justice to the man who wronged me—never did bud any leaves that year. Or any other year. It just up and died. White oaks aren’t common in this part of Oregon anyway, so the fact that it was even growing out here was something. And then to just die like that? Unheard of.”

I say nothing.

“I never forgot that tree. When I had trouble falling asleep because I couldn’t shake the memory of him, I’d close my eyes and picture the big oak.”

“And then you started making quilts with it.”

She nods. “I found out that winter that my daddy took a chainsaw to it, cut it down. That was his way of dealing with the memory. But I wanted to keep it alive, to pay my respects to it for giving me solace that day and for so many nights after. I only ever meant to make one, but I found it strangely therapeutic.”

I take in the tidy stacks of boxes lining the far wall, three high and stretching the entire length of the wall, identified with color names scrawled across the front. All filled with material for her quilts. Hundreds more, probably. “Why don’t you ever give it any leaves?”

Her hands stop and she looks up at me with a baffled expression. “Because it is a dead tree, Water. It will always be bare. It’ll never be that oak that grows big and beautiful and changes colors in the fall, ever again. Not in this life, anyway.”

I nod slowly. “Right.” Is Ginny really talking about the tree anymore? Or is she talking about herself? Is she the lone tree that died that day, and now watches the world from a distance? The thing is, Ginny’s not dead, far from it. She’s just been afraid.

“I think the buds are there. You just need to look harder to see them.”

She opens her mouth to say something but hesitates, as if changing her mind. “You should stretch out on that couch and get some rest. You’ll need your energy to deal with them tomorrow.”

“Or I could just hide out in here forever,” I say, half-jokingly, my eyes on the black bars that protect me from the outside.

“You will not.” Ginny’s stubborn jaw sets. “I won’t allow that. You’ll find out what that boy knows and then you’ll decide what you want to do.”

“What if I don’t want to know?”

“It’s too late for that, now. The truth has found its way to the surface, like it always does, eventually,” she answers, matter-of-factly. “You’ll never be able to trust any of them again if you don’t just face this—and, whether you like it or not, they’re your family now. They’re going to be in your life for a long time. You have to trust your family or you have nothing.

“Besides, I’ve seen the way you look at that boy. Since the very first day. Those feelings didn’t sprout the moment you walked onto this ranch, and they’ll survive because you came to this ranch. If you’re lucky, you’ll come out of this never needing a dead tree to save you. Promise me you’ll hear them out.”

“I will,” I promise.

A bit softer, she says, “Go on now. Lie down and sleep.”

I figure that’s her way of telling me that she’s done enough talking so I do as she says, expecting that I won’t ever fall asleep. But when I close my eyes, I feel the weight of the day start tugging at my consciousness. “I’m really glad I met you, Ginny,” I say into the silent night as I drift off.

I think I hear her say, “Not as glad as I am to have met you, girl.”

I can’t be sure, though.

Moisture against my cheek wakes me up, followed by several urgent pokes. Cracking an eye, I find a snout in my line of sight. It takes me a second to find my bearings and remember I’m at Ginny’s. In another second, I remember why, and the hollowness in my chest instantly appears. “You want out, Felix?”

He begins prancing and lets out a whine. The curtains are drawn shut, so I have no idea what time it is, but it feels too early. I give my eyes a rub and then, pushing off the quilt that Ginny must have draped over me at some point, I sit up.

Ginny’s still sitting in her rocking chair, her quilt stretched across her lap, her eyes closed. Asleep.

Felix whines again. “Shhh . . .” I warn, not wanting to wake Ginny up. “Come on.” I get up and head toward the front door, inhaling deeply as I prepare for what may be waiting just outside. Did they give up and go home?

Felix whines a third time and, when I turn around, I realize he’s not following me. He’s beside Ginny, his chin resting on her lap.

I half-expect her to reach down and swat the dog away. But she doesn’t stir. Something’s wrong.

“Ginny?” The old wood floors creak under my weight as I quickly backtrack. Reaching out, I give her shoulder a shake. Her head flops to the side and then forward. “Ginny!” I grab her wrist, searching for a pulse. It’s there, but it’s weak.

I need help. I need a phone and an ambulance and . . . I need Meredith and Amber.

I struggle with the barricade, finally getting it off and the door open. Stepping out into the pre-dawn light, I find Jesse and Sheriff Gabe perched on either side of Ginny’s porch swing, each wearing the startled look of someone dozing off and then suddenly wakening.

“Help!” is all I can manage, my fear for Ginny overpowering everything else.

It’s weird, being a visitor in the hospital I considered my home for almost three months. My first home. I experienced so much confusion, so much panic, so much fear within these beige walls. Now, I sit in an uncomfortable white plastic chair in the waiting room, experiencing them all over again, except this time for someone else.

We’ve been here all day: Amber sitting on one side of me, Jesse on the other, and Gabe pacing the room. All of us silent, with dark circles growing under our eyes. Avoiding what felt unavoidable only twenty-four hours ago. Still, I can’t imagine being here alone, without them, right now.

Amber has attempted conversation a few times but I’ve reciprocated with only two-word answers, losing myself in the emergency cases walking through the door—everything from children with fevers to open forehead gashes. Jesse seems content just to sit beside me. He drifted off a few times, falling onto my shoulder.

I didn’t push him away. I didn’t want to.

I’m on my feet the moment Meredith emerges, taking slow, even steps toward us. She’s trained to give news—both good and bad—to families, with minimal emotion. As a result, I can’t guess what she’s coming to tell us, her face an unreadable mask.

Until she slumps into the chair across from me. That’s when I know.

“We found a sizeable tumor inside Ginny’s head. That’s what caused the herniation in her midbrain, which put her in a coma. We’ve relieved some of the pressure in her head. But . . .” Her voice grows hoarse. “It’s unlikely she’s going to wake up and, if she does, we expect that she will be severely disabled.”

What? “No . . .” My head shakes back and forth. “She was fine last night. She was talking to me and yelling at them,” I throw a loose hand toward Jesse and Gabe, who stands beside him now. “She was fine.”

Meredith nods. “She was. And now she’s not. Sometimes that happens with these kinds of things.”

“Is the tumor cancerous?”

“We’re still running tests.”

“And you had no idea? Wasn’t she here just a few months ago?” Gabe presses.

“For her gallbladder,” Meredith snaps. “We weren’t doing CT scans of her brain.”