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Nate takes my hand in his, and the three of us run after my father’s car. Adrenaline drives energy into our tired bodies like a bunch of crazy kids. I almost lose a shoe a couple of times, but I shake it back on and keep moving.
Apple trees soon come into view, under the headlights of Dad’s car. The winter has stripped their branches bare of fruit and leaves, but they’re beautiful nonetheless as they stand tall, dotted around haphazardly like nature’s soldiers greeting us.
Dad stops the car where some trees huddle too close together for the car to pass by. Ben runs over to the car. I run in the opposite direction, running my hand over the bark of the first tree I encounter.
‘We need to find the tree with Nana and Sketch’s initials carved into it,’ I explain, frantically making my way to the next tree.
Without me asking for help, Nate hurries to the nearest tree and runs around it, scanning the knobbly old bark for letters. We scan several trees without any luck. Finally, exhausted, I stop and look around. The orchard is dense with trees. There must be hundreds. It could take us hours to find the special tree. My heart sinks.
‘Holly, Holly,’ my mother calls, her voice carrying in the wind.
I abandon my tree search and hurry towards the car.
‘Fetch the blankets, quickly,’ my mother instructs when I’m close.
I do as I’m told, my hands shaking with a mix of cold and adrenaline. I tuck an oversized fleece blanket against my chest and watch as my father scoops Nana out of the car as if she were a little girl. She winces as he lowers her into the waiting wheelchair, and I know that although she won’t say it and worry us, she’s in pain.
My father slots the oxygen tank into a pocket on the back of the wheelchair as if Nana is a scuba diver getting ready for an adventure, and I wish she was.
‘Aren’t her meds working?’ I whisper to Marcy as I tuck the blanket around Nana, taking care not to press too firmly on her aching bones.
‘As best they can,’ Marcy whispers. ‘If she took anything stronger, she wouldn’t be alert enough to see the stars, and we wouldn’t want that.’
I glance at the sky. The clouds are thick and show no sign of parting.
‘Don’t worry, Holly,’ Marcy says, reading me. ‘The stars aren’t going anywhere, and maybe the wind will blow a gap in the clouds for us.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I sigh.
‘It’s this way,’ Nana says, calling us all to attention with her barely audible words.
‘What is, Annie?’ my father asks, staring into the darkness ahead.
‘Her tree,’ I explain so Nana doesn’t have to. ‘It’s a special tree.’
‘A special tree,’ my father says, and I realise he’s still not aware of Nana’s book.
‘I’ll explain everything later; we just really need to find this tree now,’ I say.
My father looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. And maybe on some level, I have.
‘Okay,’ he says, crinkling his nose. ‘We’ve come this far; let’s go a little farther and find this special tree, then.’
He takes my mother’s hand in his, and I study the way he looks at her as if he would walk a thousand orchards if it could ease her pain. It’s the same way Nate has been looking at me a lot recently. Helpless and wishing there was something, anything, he could do to make everything all better.
‘Do you know the way, Holly?’ Dad asks.
‘No,’ I admit. ‘But Nana does.’
‘I know this place like the back of my hand,’ Nana mumbles. ‘I could never forget.’
‘Okay,’ my father says, grabbing the handles of Nana’s wheelchair and ploughing forward through the stubborn grass. ‘C’mon, everyone,’ he commands, smiling with uncertainty. ‘We have a tree to find.’
FORTY-ONE
HOLLY
Nana directs us through the orchard as if she visits every day. The grass is long and the trees seem older and more stressed in this part. Their branches tip towards the ground like arms exhausted from carrying apples for over half a century. I wonder how many times Nana has sat in this very spot over the years. It’s exciting to finally be here, to finally share this place with her, but I wonder why she never brought us here before. All those family picnics we had growing up, she never once suggested we have a picnic here. If this is so special to her, I don’t understand why she didn’t tell us about it sooner.
