it keeps growing, even though its roots are in the water.”
“Grew out of a fence post,” Roger said. “Hard to kill a willow.”
“You,” Pamela told him, “do not have a poet’s soul,” but she smiled when she said it. “It grew up like that, you see,” she told Dorian, “in the least fertile conditions possible. You couldn’t kill it, and you couldn’t keep it down, and it grew so beautiful. It holds on, year after year, and now, it’s famous all over the world. Started as a fence post and became a beautiful thing, and an icon. We’re quite proud of our little tree and the way it hangs on.”
“Resilience,” Roger said. “Persistence, keeping on growing after you’ve been told it’s impossible. You could be right at that, love,” he told Pamela. “Could be a symbol for these two, maybe. You may be a fence post now, but if you keep trying …” He winked at us. “Some day, you’ll be a willow.”
Now, I told that part to Gray and said, “Reckon I’m still a fence post. Not sure I’ll ever be a willow.”
He said, “Willows are good. So are fence posts. Why can’t you be both?” And while I was still trying to sort out how to answer that, he asked, “Are they still here? Do you see them?”
“No. They sold the farm five years ago, went to live with their daughter in Canada. I’ll take photos, later, and email Pamela. I’d like to tell her …” I stopped.
“What,” Gray prompted.
I looked at the delicate, fragile little tree, all alone in the middle of the lake, and said, “I’d like to tell her that I’m going to do my best to grow two more willows, and that the only reason I have any idea of how to do that is that she did it with me. I need to find the courage to say what I’ve never been able to put into words. How different my life would have been without them, and how grateful I am for that. It was three weeks, and it was a lifetime. It was my new life.”
17
Food of the Gods
Gray
I got Daisy to agree to wait until morning to leave, at least. If she’d got more than four hours of sleep after all that almost-dying and rescuing, I didn’t see when she’d have done it, and getting home at midnight with two girls newly arrived from the Jurassic Period, trying to start them on their next chapter with all that emotion racketing around in her body, would be too much even for somebody as competent as Daisy.
I didn’t say that, of course. I said, while we were loitering in the entryway at Francesca’s, waiting for our pizzas, “Nah, let’s not go tonight. Tomorrow morning, early as you like. Before six, even, but not tonight. Pizza’s rubbish without a beer. I could want two, in fact, and how’m I meant to drive after that?”
“Especially since you still have a headache,” she said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes. You do.” When I just looked at her, she pointed to her eyes and said, “Sunglasses indoors?”
I shrugged. “Maybe a bit.” I didn’t.
She huffed a little. It was cute. I didn’t tell her so. “Well,” she said, “don’t expect me to do my patented temple massage if you make it flare up again. You can just suffer.”
I smiled. “Thank you, Florence Nightingale.”
She laughed, but she also stopped talking about going home tonight, or about her brother coming to get her. She’d done some quick ringing-up, using my phone, while I’d been ordering, and judging from the extra-breezy tone of her voice and the length of the conversation, this Dorian fella wasn’t any more enamored of his sister’s tendency toward unilateral action than I was myself.
She’d be one hell of a frustrating woman to be involved with. I was guessing the ferret fought with tooth and claw. I was also guessing, though, that she’d make up with just that much intensity, too. There could even be some teeth and claws involved, which wasn’t exactly a horrible thought. Also, her T-shirt was clinging to her, because it was damp from all that running. She was wearing a bra under it, but as I’d already noted, it wasn’t the most structured item I’d ever seen in my life—she didn’t need much support, I guessed, being so perky and little—and it was showing through a bit, what with that dampness and all. That was another not-horrible development.