The way he said it made me smile.
To the left was a low wooden bridge crossing Black Pond, with reeds and lilies growing on either side of it. The sun was shining, and birds were dancing about. To the right, the pathway led deeper into the forest.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a structure high up in a tree down the wooded path to the right. “Let’s take a peek.” I tugged his hand before he had a chance to respond. “I think it’s a tree house.”
Growing up with three brothers, I’d always wanted to prove that I could do what they could. There was a field with cows down thestreet from the house we grew up in. My brothers liked to go in there and try to get the cows riled up, even though the cows never seemed to care about having visitors. I stayed out of the field for the most part, avoiding the massive cowpats at all cost, but the trees surrounding the field were perfect for climbing. There was an old oak they favored, especially hospitable with its knotted, aged trunk and branches and its well-worn foot holes. When my brothers climbed trees, they always seemed so free, high up in the branches, their own private hideaway—a boys’ club where no one could reach them, no one could hear what they talked about. It didn’t seem to matter what was going on below them, they were immune to it, like birds cruising in the wind currents.
I started climbing so I could see what they saw, feel what they felt, but they made the ascent look easy. When they weren’t around, I’d climb onto the fence and attempt to pull myself up, but I didn’t have the arm strength they had, and even one or two branches up seemed terrifyingly high. My father would have locked me in my room for a week if he’d seen me up there.
When I was eight or nine, my brothers were all playing ball by the field with their friends and I casually walked over and started climbing. Knowing they hadn’t noticed yet, I kept going, pumped with adrenaline, not looking down. Just one more branch, I told myself, then just one more. The branches were getting thinner and weaker the higher I got, and I finally had to stop. I looked up. I was near the top of the tree and could see clear across the field and beyond for what felt like miles. As the girl of the family, I’d been missing this. This freedom, this rush. I was on top of the world. Then I looked down and gasped. I was so high up. I clung to the tree branch I wasperched on, frozen. The muscles in my feet cramped up, and I was paralyzed with fear.
“Erwin,” I cried. “George!”
They couldn’t hear me. They were caught up in a game of ball farther down the street, and though I could hear them laughing and calling out to one another, they couldn’t hear me. Even my voice was stuck, as if my mind couldn’t let me yell too loud, in case it threw me off balance. Eventually Junior, he must have been five or six at the time, grew bored with the ball game, his brothers and their older friends, and he wandered off closer to where I was. I called out to him and asked him to get help.
“Geez, sis, are you nuts or something?” Erwin said after Junior ran and got him. “What were you thinking?” He looked up at me, clearly irritated that I’d interrupted his game and gone someplace I obviously wasn’t supposed to be. He climbed up and guided me in getting down, telling me where to put my feet and which branch to hold. “Don’t go climbing places you can’t get down from,” he said as we worked our way slowly to the bottom.
“How was I supposed to know I couldn’t get down?” I said, almost in tears.
“Just go back to your singing and dancing and dolls, and stop being such a pest,” he said. “Bother your own friends, not us.”
I ran toward the tree ahead of Archie as we got close.
“You’re not seriously going up there?” he asked as I began to climb up a rope ladder hanging down from the tree.
“Hold on to the bottom of it, will you?”
Before he could protest, I was already making my way up to the top, where I reached over and grabbed one of the branches, hoisting myself up to the next and the next until I was on the platform. It was a massive tree, and that old oak back in St. Cloud probably paled in comparison, but I’d been to a lot of places I wasn’t supposed to be since then. This height didn’t faze me anymore.
“What a view,” I said from the top. “Join me.” I looked down at Archie, so handsome and fit in his hiking gear. He looked as comfortable in plaid britches and rolled-up sleeves as he did in a sharp tailored suit and fedora. I liked that about him, how he could seamlessly glide from one environment to the next.
“I don’t know if it will hold my weight.”
I pretended to jump up and down. “Feels sturdy enough to me.”
“Good Lord, you’re making me nervous.” Archie began wrangling with the ladder, swinging all over the place with no one to hold it still. “I can’t very well leave you up here alone when you’re exhibiting such reckless behavior,” he said, breathing deeply when he finally reached the top.
“Wise,” I said, giving him a hand. “Very wise.”
The tree house was tall enough for us to stand, and the platform encircled the entire trunk. On the far side there was a window cut out, providing a panoramic view of the water and beyond.
“It’s beautiful up here,” I said.
“It sure is,” Archie said, standing behind me and placing his hands gently on my waist. I turned around and we were inches apart. “Olive,” he began, as if he were about to ask me a question, those dark brown eyes, serious and intense, looking right at me. But before he could say more, I kissed him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
On our last day at the Pines, Archie planned an excursion to Paul Smith’s Hotel, where it was rumored Alberto Ricci would be treating his fellow guests to a couple of songs. I had it on good authority from the man himself that this was in fact the case. Archie arranged for two Concord coaches, each drawn by four horses, to deliver the guests at the Pines to Paul Smith’s in the late afternoon so we could enjoy refreshments outside on the hotel’s lakefront prior to dinner. There was space for twenty guests in total, and Archie invited Ruthie and me to join him.
“What are you wearing?” Ruthie asked, pushing open the door to the bathroom in the cabin, where I was smoothing my hair with a comb and water, curving the ends so that they gently touched my jawline.
“Haven’t decided yet,” I said, dampening the comb again, attempting to tame an unruly fringe that wanted to flick left when it was supposed to lie straight across my brow. Ruthie stood behind mewatching in the mirror, then she ran her fingers over the short red waves set in place to frame her face.
“You’re so lucky,” she said. “I could never do a razor-sharp bob like you.”
“Why would you want to?” I turned and cupped her red hair. “Your hair is so pretty.”
“But yours is so dramatic and startling.”
