Chapter 1
Olive Township
I've outlived somany of the inhabitants I've loved.
Trailblazers and pioneers, land grabbers and cowboys. I was nothing, until they made me something. Big dreams accompanied them, along with grit and determination. Together we rose, piece by piece. Even today, we grow.
They named me Olive Township, a nod to the fruit tree growing in the arid Sonoran Desert. From a few came many, until it was an orchard. The people came, they built their homes and grew their families. There have been struggles and triumphs, feast and famine. Through it, I've loved them all. I've celebrated their birth, and grieved their passing.
I never claimed to be magical, but there is something about me. Something special. The residents feel it, even if they can't define it. Is it in the searing summer heat, the way the sun permeates the skin and curls into the marrow of the bones? Perhaps it's in the majestic Saguaro, the way it chooses the month of May to show off hundreds of the white waxy blossoms it hides all year long. Maybe it's in the survival despite an inhospitable environment, the way residents have learned to work around the dust and summer heat, the frigid winter nightsand spindly flora. It's as though the terrain tests a person, and if they prove their mettle, they're in for life.
What the desert lacks in hospitality, she makes up for in beauty. The landscape produces a special person, one who is tough and bold. All that said, the inhabitants of Olive Township are fallible. They make mistakes. They demonstrate their knowledge, their courage, their idiocy. There have been a few bad apples along the way.
Oh, how I have loved them. Some have moved on, and I haven't wished them back. Others leave, and I long for them.
For one, in particular.
Chapter 2
Penn
I wouldn't sayI'm hiding, but it would be hard to make the argument I am not at leasthiding out.
Summerhill Olive Mill, by way of Summerhill Road, is the perfect place to lie low while I wait for the relentless sun to loosen its grip on Olive Township. Lucky for me, a road winds around the town and north to the turn off for the mill, saving me from having to drive through town.
Inevitably, I will make that drive, and probably soon. But I'll avoid it if I can, and right now, that is within my control.
I'd planned to arrive in the town in which I was born, and spent the first thirteen years of my life terrorizing, under the cover of darkness. I wanted one night to ease back into this place, to give myself some breathing room. My plan was derailed by the fact I made damn good time from San Diego. With only a few eighteen wheelers to slow my progression, my truck tires ate up Interstate 8. The dust storm in the distance spurred me to step on the gas, as did the lead foot I adopt when I'm anxious. I stopped once at a famous hole-in-the-wall in southern Phoenix for the largest size they sell of prickly pear lemonade, and asecond time on the Salt River reservation for fry bread drizzled with wildflower honey and dusted with powdered sugar.
The sugar induced coma was worth it, not to mention the reprieve it gave me from having my nerves being the only thing making me queasy.
Olive Township and I, well, we have a storied history. Some of it pretty, some of it ugly, and some of it I'd rather forget.
The single glimmer of relief for my apprehension comes from my best friend, Hugo De la Vega. He's the only person who knows I'm returning, but not even he knows why I left. Now that my mother is gone, there is nobody but me who knows the truth, and I wish I could take a Magic Eraser to that memory.
It's only been a few months since I last saw Hugo face-to-face, when he came to San Diego for my mom's funeral. He won't mind me crashing his place at the olive mill for the next hour while I wait for the sun to set. Once that happens, I'll mosey on back to Hugo's rental property in town, one of those cookie-cutter stucco homes where there's an HOA and your neighbor is too close.
I roll my window down and prop my forearm on the frame, taking a deep, clarifying breath as I climb slightly in elevation. Slim Jim, my two-year-old Belgian Malinois, pokes his nose out of my window from his place in the back seat.
He sniffs frantically, catching new smells. He's a K9 defense trained dog who washed out of the program because he won't bite to the corners of his mouth. I was lucky enough (or unlucky, depending on how I look at it) to be available when he needed a home. We've only been together five months, but I already love him.
Beside my head, Slim Jim continues his sniffing, acquainting himself with the place that will be our home for the next five or six weeks.
As much as I hate to admit it, I missed Olive Township. The gently sloping hills, the olive grove stretching as far as the eye can see. It's a gorgeous little corner of the Sonoran Desert, but there's something else about it, something a little extra. Almost…magical.
I could kick my own ass for saying that, sounding like a tourist who has just exited the world famous Sagewood Wellness Spa in town, but something about being gone for so long puts this place in a different perspective.
Or maybe it's me who has changed. Hell, I know that to be true. I'm not even a fraction of the person I was the last time I called this place home. Thirteen-year-old me and twenty-eight-year-old me are nothing alike. On the inside, and most definitely on the outside.
The worn metal sign announcing the Summerhill Olive Mill with its olive branch logo appears a quarter mile away. I take the turnoff, steering my truck with motions that are second nature. I didn't have my driver's license when I lived here before, but I'd rode passenger enough to know each shift and bump, the way the road rises higher on the right a moment after the turn. And, just like I knew it would, my body shifts left to accommodate the rise.
I feel oddly comforted knowing that although almost everything else has changed, this hasn't. The constancy grounds me a bit, puts me back in a feeling of control. I'll be ok. I've got this. I can tango with Olive Township, and come out the other side.
Buildings appear on the horizon. One, maybe two stories, white-sided buildings with the modern farmhouse look, as if that famous interior design couple had their way with the place. The olive mill restaurant sits behind these buildings, and set back a quarter mile behind a copse of trees, is Hugo's home.
Hugo has kept me in the loop over the years, telling me about the updates his family had been doing at the mill. What I'm seeing now is far greater than I imagined. It looks cozy as hell, and I'd very much like to lay out on one of those porch swings the size of a bed.
Considering the number of cars filling the medium-sized parking lot Hugo had poured last fall in front of the Summerhill store, I'll have to live out my porch swing fantasy another time.
