PROLOGUE
UNKNOWN INLAND LAKE IN MICHIGAN 1969
My haunted feet guided me toward the old hickory again. The worn down trail etched in their memory night after night. It didn’t matter to me then why it called. Because when the hickory wanted me there, I would be—without question.
For that reason, just as my feet knew their repeated destination every night since the roots first started calling, my now seventeen-year-old heart felt certain that if the trees were to have a muse, it would be me. Whether it was a whisper of shuffled leaves, a bewitching embrace from their outreaching limbs waiting to be climbed, or a distant memory from the smell of their earthy roots beckoning me to come closer. I always would, even if I didn’t then know why.
Each type of tree pulled me inward through whispered promises carried in the evening breeze, filling me with completely unapologetic feelings. For all woods spoke to me, that much is true. And they spoke of a time when I had known them better.
Surely some form of subtle inside joke, knowing how easily they could lure me with their expansive limbs that reached to the sky and their deep roots that weaved toward the core of the earth. But thatbeaten path told the reality, because ofallthe trees that called my name, it was the hickory that had the strongest pull.
In my youth, I would often find myself rooted at the base of that old hickory tree, being just off the path along the woods of our old family estate. But there was something about that hickory that made it stand out among the rest. An urgent tug at my core reached deep within me to make my blood hum with curiosity. With a need to be near it.
Its claw-like roots stretched down the hill, like it might get up and walk right to me. I thought without a doubt that it wanted to. That as much as I was haunting its strong limbs with my presence every night, I knew the true haunting was reversed.
Within its exposed roots were gaping moss covered holes that seemed they could open up and just swallow me whole into a portal to a world unseen. Secretly, I often thought, I would welcome that idea.
It was a tree so tall and out of place. Its limbs stretched to the heavens, but seemed to then bend down like prison bars, caging in what was found below. For me, the branches offered an unseen protection, much like a warm embrace.
I was a prisoner of my own doing, but I welcomed its warden. A safe haven that urged me there at every waking moment. Some unknown calling of invisible music singing my name through the ever-changing breezes of the seasons.
Only the hickory knows your desires;it seemed to speak in my mind. I didn’t know then that these subtle urgings to the hickory were part of something deeper. Built from a legacy I had no part in creating, but that had everything to do with me.
At the base of the tree, a large root burst out and sat there like a jagged finger. A perfect sitting nook. While the other side held a root, that almost seemed to wrap around the whole of the tree. In that spot is where I would spend most of my time.
I lay there in a misshapen circle that if I looked too hard,I swear I could see a glimpse of a sparkle of a life once lived.BecauseIhadlivedit. Or, as strange as it may sound, I could see a tall form in the distance, always watching from the depths of something sea foam hued.Becausehealwayshadhiseyesonme. At other times, I would hear a shimmer of a whisper that seemed just for me.Becauseitwas.
What I didn’t know then was that, in those depths, I had lived many lives before—in this world and his—because hickory wasn’t just some tree with bark my heart ached to trail my fingers along. No, there was a man beneath its roots that tethered my soul to his. Not even a man, but something more. Something ancient.
That old hickory tree is where my story began in this life. And while it started promisingly with love and lust bursting at the seams with the one who remains tied to my destiny through the realms beneath the trees, it ends quite the opposite. And it ends that way in every life he finds me.
1
BROKEN PIECES
DETROIT 1978
My name is Jade—like the plant,notthe stone. A distinction my mother would commonly correct people on when I was younger, making sure it was a mistake that was never repeated twice. Why she cared so much forever evaded me, but I know it wasn’t malicious in manner. Just one of her many quirks regarding my life, like many mothers have. But whether it was a jade plant or a jade stone, Jade is the name I own.
Growing up, we even had a large jade plant that sat in a cozy corner of the kitchen. I felt nothing towards it. Some days when the sun hit it just right, you could see tiny dust particles dancing off of it like moths to a flame. And I guess in those moments, I felt some vague wonder towards it. Some small bit of connection. But it was a connection based on the fact that I too felt dusty, stagnant, and immovable. As if I were put in a moment of time, I didn’t quite belong.
And so, I escaped into my mind and into music. Music always granting me access to some feeling or place in time I felt more attached to. The words of Stevie Nicks holding more value than any relationship in my real life could offer, apart from my late mother.
My mind was another story. It would take me places thatcouldn’t possibly be real. Daydreams, some might argue, but to me they felt as sure as the ground beneath my feet, anchoring like embedded roots deep within my psyche. Feeling more like visions of moments I swear I’ve lived before.
These visions that played out in my head stopped being a habit—they became who I was. Tugging me toward a life of what some might see as quiet contemplation, when in reality my mind was plagued by a series of movies playing out in real time fromanothertime altogether. Scenes so real that I felt a nagging feeling telling me something vital was missing. Or someone.
I was called many names in my younger days; mysterious, spacey, and, always my favorite, devoid of reality. I’d happily claim each adjective as my own. While I hold no validity in people’s perception of me, there is always a small smidge of truth buried within it.
In all honesty, I grasped at a love my mind invented—idealized and out of reach. A version of love that I felt like I knew on some base level of my being, but never feeling like I could actually picture in this reality. Even when my feet were planted firmly on the ground, something always tugged me elsewhere, some place deeper—some place that felt more like home than this in-between liminal life.
And even now, as a twenty-six-year-old, I still hold on to that deeply romanticized idea of love. A love that dances you around on a balmy moonlit night in the presence of friends, spinning until you only see each other. One that creates handmade treasures that speak directly to your heart, or even transcends time to search for you no matter the circumstances. I realize I am the odd one out, but that is the love I have been looking for, and I’m starting to think it doesn’t exist for me.
Thankfully, I hold that level of adoration for the treasures in my shop. The touch of my hand imbuing it from them, as well as gracing me with a past glimpse of a tall and dark man handing it to a faceless girl about the same age as myself. These vaguely nostalgic items in this shop are thereason I stay.
Working at a vintage art and collectibles gallery has its perks. For one, I get to roam the cities in search of anything old with monetary value to sell in my mother’s shop. At least I used to when she was alive and still felt enthusiasm toward the hunt, but her death put a halt to the giddy exploration of hidden treasures.
Getting to learn the history behind those objects is another perk I am fond of, and one that has not yet faded. My mother and I would spend hours researching, and I can still invoke the joy we felt when we cracked the historical code on a turn of the century Art Nuevo piece from France that last spring she was still with me. She passed when I was nineteen, and this store is what she left to me, and all that I have left of her.
