“Definitely no,” Teagan sighed, feeling completely useless, mourning a wasted life that left him so lacking in any skills which might be of use to Darcy. “Um... what about this afternoon?”
“I’m doing computer stuff this afternoon,” she said, looking at him askance. “By myself. Do you need something? I’m free after dinner—well, after dinner and the mowing—if you need a ride to the store or—”
“No, no, I’m fine, I just thought you were in charge of wilderness education here, since you were talking about the woods—never mind. I just didn’t know if you might have something planned for today.”
Darcy frowned, lower lip curling over her teeth in an appealing way. “I am in charge of wilderness education,” she said with a little uncertainty, as though she expected him to dispute it.
Teagan had been waiting less than patiently for the daily schedule to reflect some activity led by Darcy, but the only item bearing her name had been supply runs into town.
“You mentioned working on the waterfall trail,” he said. “Which sounded... fun. Or hiking. I like hiking.” Hethought he’d like hiking with Darcy and without bears, anyway.
And despite his hope that he’d played the conversation straight, Darcy’s answering smirk was knowing. Her eyelashes dipped as she considered him in his oxford and chinos.
“You’re having pastoral fantasies, huh? You wanna go have a frolic in the woods?”
Teagan blushed. “I’m not sure I frolic, as a habit—”
“I bet you’d surprise yourself,” Darcy said. Then she checked her watch. “You know what? No. Yeah. Let’s do some wilderness education. Fuck this. Yeah. Yeah. Come on.” She stood up directly into his personal space, just long enough for him to reckon with the coiled energy implied in her body and the obvious strength of her arms and bare legs. Then she flipped into quick, decisive motion.
Teagan had to walk fast to keep up with her as she led him to the storage shed at the back of the residence. She glanced around as though expecting opposition or an ambush along the way, but they saw nobody.
In the storage shed, Darcy loaded him down with lopping shears and a bow saw, then fetched her trail backpack and a battery-powered portable speaker.
“Come on, come on, don’t let Rachel catch me doing something fun,” she said, striding briskly through the freshly mown grass behind the residence. The area between the residence and the lake was mown, leaving the fields sloping up toward the hills still undone.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“The old trail. It needs to be cleared out, because it hasn’t been used in a few years. It goes up to the same waterfall you saw last week.”
They approached a featureless clump of bushes at the rear of the lawn that Darcy had already mown. Darcy dropped her backpack, face softening with anticipation, while Teagan eyed the thick underbrush with suspicion, scanning it for ursine threat.
“Here we go,” Darcy said in a very satisfied way. Teagan was glad to be some minor cause of that state, but he couldn’t tell what she was looking at.
“Where’s the trailhead?” Teagan asked.
“You don’t see it?”
“No?” Teagan said. All he saw were trees. Big, potentially bear-infested trees.
Darcy waded into the thicket and pointed up at the stub of a branch that had been cut away between the two trees closest to the lake. Then another. Now he could see them—old cuts framing a way up the hill. There was vegetation growing over the break, but a space about five feet wide was level and free of rocks.
“You can see where the branches were cut back before to leave a corridor. That’s what you’re going to do today—cut back the new limbs,” Darcy told him authoritatively.
Teagan abruptly calmed, because that sounded very tangible and achievable. Here was a thing he could do, for once.
When he quit his quiet, boring job trading municipal bonds to take over the family charitable foundation, he’d imagined that he’d only stay six months or so—just until the finances were straightened out and under control. Two years in, it was difficult to tell if he’d accomplished anything more than understanding the scope of the problems. Spending had to increase every year to keep up with the growing number of kids who needed summer programming, but he wasn’traising enough money to keep up with the spending. Unlike every other problem in his life, it seemed completely immune to effort. He didn’t even know what he was doing wrong.
But this? Yes. He could cut the branches with Darcy. And then there would be a trail.
Darcy’s attitude became very relaxed as they got into the trees as well, and Teagan cautiously allowed himself to look forward to a morning spent doing pleasant, industrious tree things with Darcy. The look she gave him as he hefted the clippers was approving, and he wanted to wallow in it.
“Better than meditation, right?” she said, her smile like light through the forest canopy. “Everyone comes out to Montana to touch grass, but Rachel has them sitting on that deck all day long communing with a bunch of rocks she bought at the visitor center gift shop.”
“This is better,” Teagan agreed. This was great.
Darcy was a good teacher. She showed him how to prune the new growth on the trees outside the bark collar. How to make two cuts on thicker branches with the bow saw to remove the branch without harming the tree. Where willow was sprouting and would soon cover the trail if it wasn’t dug up.
Darcy’s voice changed when she was telling him how to do something. The usual note of caution fell away, replaced with actual interest. She cared, not just that he pruned each branch correctly, but that he knew how to do it for all the trees he was bound to prune in the future, and that he understood why he was cutting each branch at the correct angle for the safety of both hiker and tree. Teagan smiled at her as she sternly forbade him to cut his toes off by dropping his tools on them.
