I could see a subtle smile like the crest of a wave trying to break across her face. She bit her lip to hold it back and nodded.
“Cool,” I said.
“Cool.”
SIX.
When I was a kid, I thought trees were gods. It’s hard not to when the forests that surround your town are full of ancient redwoods that stretch like divine monuments so far into the sky you can’t tell where the canopies of the trees end and the heavens begin.
The day I met Cal I was on one of my favorite trails near Muir Woods, having a conversation with a redwood I’d named Poseidon.
If you’ve never stood beside a redwood, this might not make sense, but trust me when I say they’re immense, awe-inspiring, and majestic. Arboreal skyscrapers, they put you in your place and remind you how small and insignificant you are. They’re living testaments to resilience, and proof that there is poetry in nature.
I’d named this particular tree Poseidon because its trunk was hollowed out at the base, so huge I could stand inside of it, and when I did I swore I could hear the ocean, even though the beach was another five miles away.
Given that I’ve already admitted to having conversations with my dead brother, and now I’m admitting that my closest living confidantes were trees, I feel the need to state, for the record, that I wasn’t crazy. I just spent a lot of time alone. And trees, like music, have always been good at keeping me company.
If I’m trying to make a case for my sanity, I probably shouldn’t admit this next part either, but on the particular day in question, I was discussing with Poseidon how I could kill Bob Harper and make it look like an accident.
Listen, my father issues are a long story, and I don’t feel like getting too deep into them—there are enough sons in the world who blame their emotionally or physically unavailable dads for their problems. But I’m in my late thirties now, and that means I’m old enough to know I can only blame myself for where I am. Nevertheless, it’s worth noting a few significant details that include Bob and Ingrid and their shortcomings as parents.
First, after my brother died, I stopped talking for two years. I can’t explain why, except to say that it seemed too exhausting to use words after I lost Sam. It felt even more exhausting to use words that expressed what I was feeling. I tried, but nothing came out. And the longer I didn’t talk, the easier it became to remain silent.
My silence was hard on Bob and Ingrid, and in the beginning they were sympathetic. I guess they figured that once I came to terms with what had happened to Sam, I would go back to being a normal kid. But months went by and I stayed mute and weird, and Bob’s patience ran out.
He dragged me to a bunch of therapists, but none of them helped. After the therapists came a slew of medical doctors who assured Bob there was no physical reason I couldn’t speak. That’s when what was left of his sympathy turned to anger. I’m sure it was me he was mad at, but he took a lot of it out on Ingrid, and the following year they split up.
Ingrid and I stayed in the Mill Valley house, and Bob moved to a dark, three-story houseboat in Sausalito. He lived less than ten miles from us, and he and I were supposed to spend every other weekend together, but by the end of June I hadn’t seen him once since school let out over a month earlier.
I don’t think he liked being around me, and I couldn’t blame him. Who wants to be around a sullen kid who doesn’t talk? Bob would ask me questions and I would just stare at him. Then he would blow his top, grab me by the shoulders, and try to shake the words out of me, shaking so hard I could hear cracks and pops in my neck and back like I was being adjusted by some kind of lunatic chiropractor.
When that didn’t get me to open up, Bob would shout about how hard he worked and ask me why I didn’t understand that all of it was for me and Sam, and now that Sam was gone, I was all he had. “Why can’t you appreciate all I do for