They get smaller and smaller, the houses older and spaced further apart, the hills steeper.
And I’m starting to wonder if the entrance to Narnia is actually hidden somewhere in the middle of Sunflower Hill.
The middle that, until now, I’ve never known about.
When I was a kid, I used to bike through the woods and pop out in random areas I didn’t recognize, only for those areas to quickly become part of my mental map as I explored.
But those woods were on the other side of town, where I grew up.
And I’m once again humbled. This town I thought I knew so well apparently has a few tricks up its sleeve.
Finding Evie here should have been my first clue.
As the GPS directs me to a gravel driveway that’s mostly grass, at this point, I yearn for Evie’s four-wheel drive. I briefly wonder if Reed found a way to hack into my car’s computer and lead me to my death.
But I shake that thought off quickly. He doesn’t hate me that much.
Yet.
Old orange signs tacked to the trees around me warn me that this area is private property, and judging from the state of the road, I deem that to be very true. So private that my car might be first to have graced this driveway in years.
And when I hit a particularly large pothole, I abandon it altogether. This road—if I can call it that—is rough, and I really don’t need to involve a tow truck in this visit.
I walk along the overgrown driveway toward a building I can just barely make out in the distance.
And it’s surprisingly peaceful. Birds chirping in the distance, squirrels hopping from tree to tree. Every so often, the sun peeks through the canopy of leaves above me and highlights the ground in front of me.
And as I come upon the building, the road veers off to my left, another building just barely visible in the distance that I can only assume is Reed’s second property, if the address is any indication.
I turn to the house in front of me, getting the oddest sense that I’ve been here before.
On the front door is a sign marking the property as condemned, so I don’t bother knocking. I had a feeling it would be abandoned anyway, considering Reed’s apparent non-involvement with it.
But following my spidey senses that tell me this place is familiar, I go ahead and walk around to the back of the building.
And I pause when the trees open and I realize I’m staring down at the sunflower farm.
I blink, wondering if there could possibly be another sunflower farm, but something tells me Eve would have figured out a way to eliminate her competition if there was.
So I drove seventeen minutes through winding backroads into Narnia… and Narnia, apparently, is the cabin that Evie always thought about one day buying.
And Reed owns it.
Around back, I take a seat on a thick tree stump that’s the perfect height for a bench and look out over the fields. The sunflowers are sparse after the storm and our panicked chopping, but there are still a few late-blooming yellows and oranges among the green.
I stare into the trees, wondering how close my own property is. A hundred yards? Maybe two?
This whole time Reed has been pitting Evie and me against each other, but I’m starting to wonder if these cabins had anything to do with his plan. Hidden behind an LLC and abandoned to rot. If the money Reed is funneling inthrough his brother-in-law is any indication, it seems to me that he shouldn’t have trouble paying the liens on these cabins. Or just selling them at a loss, if he doesn’t want to deal with them anymore.
But with Reed’s scheme now exposed, I have to wonder whether his whole goal was to offload his cabins at a premium.
Reed knows Eve will stop at nothing to protect her sunflower farm. And Eve claims that it’s hard to keep the place running, but I’ve seen more ingenuity from her than anyone. It’s not a matter of whether shecanpay for something, but what she needs to do to make it happen.
And I bet Reed knows this.
What if all that road work out front, whichdoesaffect Eve’s business—albeit less than it affects Gam’s ability to walk to the park—was an attempt at forcing Evie back and up into the hills?
I can’t be the only person to look at the placement of that second cabin and wonder why there isn’t a drivewaythere. The portions of my and Eve’s properties that connect to the main road aresteep.Hers is worn down from years of use but no doubt was almost perilous when it was made, and mine is essentially a ladder to the sky and absolutely not drivable without significant work.
