The Willow by Wendy M. McDonald

Author:Wendy M. McDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781736925454
Publisher: Table for 7 Press

No, we weren’t lucky.

Me and Mom planned it that way.

She said to hide it

right before it was time to look for it.

And we paid Dad in extra cake to keep you busy.

Oh, is that why he got like half the cake that year?

It wasn’t half.

I think it was half.

“Dad, you remember that year you ate like half Astrid’s birthday cake?”

He doesn’t respond.

“She’s out here every day doing her fairy dance,” I say. “I wish I knew what was wrong with the willow—why it’s hardly grown in four years. I keep expecting her to ask why the fairy dance isn’t working.” Four years? Actually, it’s been seven, but I don’t correct myself out loud.

The corners of his mouth turn down.

Astrid abandons her dance and picks her way down the slippery creek bank. Across the water, on Brent’s side, the lights in the kitchen blaze on.

“Fairies don’t exist, Kirsten.” His voice is quiet. Tired.

“I know that. I’m just having fun with her.”

He closes his eyes for a long moment before speaking. “You’re having fun.”

“Yeah. I’m sure she knows it’s just a game. She’s nine.” Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

He nods. Astrid steps from rock to rock in the low, cold creek.

“But really—what if she asks why it’s not growing? I mean, it’s not diseased. Not that I can tell, at any rate. It’s just...not growing. It should be...I don’t know, twenty feet tall by now. Maybe more, given where I planted it. Weeping willows grow fast.”

“I guess...” he shakes his head like he’s clearing water from his ears. “I guess everybody deals with it differently.”

I frown at him, but he doesn’t notice. We sit there for a while, in silence but for the frog-song—gao, gao… gao, gao—while Astrid goofs around on the rocks. Why doesn’t she act her age? I get up. “Astrid, I keep telling you—the fairies won’t come if you pester them. They’re shy. Why don’t you go inside and get ready for your birthday?”

She grins and hops across the creek to our yard. Her rain boots flop as she double-times it up the hill ahead of me and scrambles onto the deck. Dad re-stained it the week before Astrid was six. You can’t tell the stain-job is that old, though—for some reason, it hasn’t weathered at all.

“Boots off outside!” I call. She only still fits in them because she’s as peaked as her willow. Isn’t that a medical thing, when kids don’t grow? Don’t thrive? Doesn’t it have something to do with food allergies or something? She ignores me.

By the time I’m inside, she’s already holed up in her room. Mom and Grandma are in the living room, arguing again. Mom’s wearing a cardigan that hides her sliced-and-bandaged arm.

“Just put it all away someplace,” says Grandma. She’s holding the books that Astrid and I left out.

“I can’t, Mom.”

“It’s not healthy. She needs to focus on the world around her.”

The doorbell chimes. I open it, and Mrs. Martin is standing there with Jeremiah. He’s finally stopped biting Astrid every time she’s in the yard, but the pinched look on his face reveals that his mother has forced him to accompany her.

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