She leaped up. ‘Weren’t you a boy scout? Never germinated an oak from an acorn?’
He threw her a questioning look. ‘Does that actually happen?’
‘It’s happening right now on the windowsill!’ She momentarily looked embarrassed. ‘Not the one I hung out of a few days ago, in case you were worried.’
‘No full moon tonight, then?’
His joke didn’t land. Instead, she walked off and climbed the rotten steps to the cabin’s wooden veranda where she collected a jam jar. ‘Follow me.’
45
Aria stood back to watch Nic work. He rolled up his sleeves, tensed his thigh muscles, lifted a foot, and put gentle pressure on a spade she’d handed him. As he dug into the ground, she was left in no doubt of how capable he was. Although he said he never got his hands dirty, from his dexterity to his work ethic he was designed to build and change landscapes. Aria felt the familiar butterflies in her stomach and tried to remember when they first appeared. Then she firmly put that out of her mind.
‘You don’t have to dig a grave, you know. The acorn is only this big.’ She held up the germinated seed between her finger and her thumb.
‘When you told me we were planting a tree, I envisioned a ten-foot-tall oak with ancient rings around its circumference.’ He threw down the spade and held his hand out for the seed. ‘I didn’t imagine a specimen jar. You collected the acorns last autumn?’
‘My dad did, I guess. I found them in a bowl and put them to work. You are planting his legacy.’
‘No pressure, then.’
Their fingers brushed as she transferred the pod into his palm, and he glanced down at fluffy sliders he’d chucked soil over twice. ‘Did you kill a squirrel for those?’
‘Why do you think all the red ones have disappeared around here?’ she grinned. ‘Listen to that owl! And there was a woodpecker doing its stuff earlier.’ They stood in silence, listening, as a small creature flitted by. She’d always loved bats.
He picked up some soil and rubbed it between his fingers. ‘I only ever considered a garden as a space to build a conservatory or to increase the value of a house. But I’ve watched you and felt envious. You fit here, like one of those sunflowers.’ He pointed to a plant that was shooting up. ‘You understand the earth and the water and the relationship we have with them much more than I do.’
A sunflower! That’s what he’d affectionately called her when she was chucking her guts up. But Aria didn’t want to reconnect with a time where there was possibility between them. ‘Everyone intrinsically understands and connects with nature.’ She brushed Nic off by parroting one of her father’s lectures. ‘They just blind themselves to it as they develop other priorities and live in places where there’s a deficit.’ She squatted, picking up a palmful of the rich, dark soil. ‘A handful of dirt is the key to everything. It doesn’t have a fancy name, and it looks a bit rubbish. But the wise appreciate its beauty and its value. Every home your company develops starts here. Pubs, offices, tower blocks, hotels, cottages, or simple huts like mine. They are all built on this. We move in and slowly put our roots down. We become connected, consciously or unconsciously, to the land beneath our feet. And our experiences push theroots deeper and feed the earth more. Some of us have families and they put down roots of their own. And over generations the goodness passes from nature to humans and back again.’ She pushed the earth together in her palm and it formed a clump. ‘It’s at the centre of everything. The most valuable thing we all have, and the thing we most neglect.’ She looked up at the sky, as though searching for something. ‘I was annoyed when Dad gifted me the hut. I wanted a house. I thought I had no roots here at the lake, believing I was a product of the town. But now I think maybe this is where he planted me, all those years ago. A little belatedly, I’ve begun building my own foundations. Of course, I can’t live here so it’s temporary, but I’ll always come back. I know that now.’ Her chest tightened. ‘And when we die, like Dad, our bodies become part of nature. Wherever we bury or scatter them.’ She didn’t fight him when he walked forward and enveloped her in his arms. After a few moments absorbing his warmth, she raised her head, and he cupped her chin in his hand. Was he going to kiss her again? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
But he let her go. ‘How long before we have an oak?’
‘My dad always said three hundred years.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Three hundred years to live and three hundred years to die.’
‘Be quicker to grow a new generation of humans,’ he said.
And she could have sworn he was the one to blush.
***
It was dark when they returned to the beach.
‘I should grab some sleep,’ he said.
Aria wanted to agree, but found herself inviting him to stay, her earlier worries overtaken by their easy companionship this evening. ‘It’s an unusually clear night. I read that you can see Mars,’ she told him.
Nipping indoors for blankets, she spread a couple out on the shingle, and they sat, slightly apart. ‘The house was tidy – you’ve been busy,’ he ventured, but she didn’t volunteer a reply.
She leaned back on her elbows. ‘Dad aways used to do his parental pep talks like this. Some people chat with their kids in the car, so they don’t have to look them in the eye when they answer. My father preferred to focus on the intergalactic highway while he warned me about the dangers of growing up.’
‘What kind of dangers?’
‘Men like you,’ she fired back, prompting a chuckle from Nic. ‘What did your mother warn you about?’ she asked.
‘Men like my dad. She never wanted me to be like him. We had a massive family crisis caused by his infidelity. He went on to have two more children after an affair that went back years.’
‘That sucks.’
‘Yep. I’m starting to wonder if they were ever happy together.’
