The Kissing Tree by Karen Witemeyer

Author:Karen Witemeyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance;FIC042040;FIC027080;FIC027270
ISBN: 9781493428243
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2020-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

two

Someday, I’ll keep going. Just up and up and up, and I’ll see the world.”

Hannah lay on the grass beneath the great old oak as purple-­gray dusk slipped through the branches above. She could almost hear her childhood self saying it, hair flying wild behind her as she swung from the swing that hung from the big branch.

And even more, she could hear her brother’s laugh. “I know you will, Hannah,” Danny had said when they were kids. “And I’ll build a house and put down roots right here, and you can come home whenever you need a place to rest those wings.”

She remembered how he’d stood so proudly, looking out on their grandparents’ farmland to the east. The tree didn’t belong to them, but the innkeeper who owned it on the next parcel over never minded their playing beneath it, so long as they steered clear of the weddings and such.

It had been a magical childhood, growing up there, with the inn’s lights glowing into the evenings, its player piano piping ragtime that tumbled down the hill to her and Danny. She used to spin herself around, fancying she knew all the loveliest dance steps, while Danny rolled his eyes and kept to his books.

And then the inn had fallen silent and empty, those months after Black Sunday. She remembered that day in vivid detail—­the tinny voice on the radio was somber with news of the great wind that picked up the earth itself from all that farmland, up in Oklahoma, spun it up in the air, and blew it clean away. So far that it blackened their skies down here in Oak Springs, its doomsday effects killing the land and sucking the life right out of towns like theirs, with farmers picking up and heading west before they lost everything.

Couples seeking a romantic getaway stopped coming to the Kissing Tree Inn, and the old Victorian had been boarded shut for a decade now.

But the tree lived on, bearing story upon story in its carved trunk.

“Just not mine,” she said, breathing out. She had never launched from that swing, kept on flying to see the world. And, ironically, Danny had been the one to be plucked from the land, until the war had claimed him for good. So here she was, planted in the grass he’d loved, fresh off from making a fool of herself to that nice airman today.

“What’s the matter with you, anyway, Hannah Garland?” She hopped to her feet, ready to give herself a proper scolding. “A man serves his country in this awful war, comes back, finds himself in the Feed and Dime, and all you can do is hush up like a silent old grave and push him out? Great gumdrops, you fool. You should’ve rolled out the red carpet! Pulled out a trumpet! Baked him a cake!”

The tirade against herself was off to a good start, but it hadn’t tapped into the tempest inside of her. Approaching the trunk, she leaned her forehead against it and let out a wail.

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