Beneath the Night Tree Read Online Free PDF

the house, his car. I waited until I heard his engine catch and his tires crunch gravel on their way back to the highway.
    It was only then that I let myself cry.

Dreams
    I didn’t sleep that night—or for many nights thereafter.
    When Michael called me from the road like he promised, and when he phoned every evening following that, we acted like the conversation in the grove had never happened. He didn’t ask me if I had made a decision and I didn’t offer one. It was as if I dreamed up the whole encounter. But I knew that it was real. I could feel the tension between us in the pauses between words, in the moments when he took a breath and I opened my mouth to say something at the exact instant that he did. There was a subtle awkwardness between us that made my heart ache.
    I wanted to talk to Grandma about it, but I couldn’t make my tongue form the syllables, the phrases and sentences that would change everything. They were hard words, cut from metal that had the potential to reshape our lives in ways that would inevitably feel violent. Leave? To me, that one small verb had many synonyms: divide , split , sever .
    So instead of wrestling with Michael’s bewildering offer, I buried it in some corner of my mind and tried to ignore it. Of course, it was like trying to disregard the proverbial elephant in the room, but at least I could deal with it alone. It was me against myself. My own feelings warred in silence.
    I was grateful that no one seemed to notice my personal combat. Daniel was protected by the cheerful oblivion of early childhood, Simon seemed absorbed in his own mild angst as school approached, and Grandma bustled through her day with little time for herself, much less occasions to observe the struggle behind my polished exterior. And I kept my armor as spit-shine sparkly as I could. It was something I had become very good at.
    Thankfully, the final week of summer freedom before Simon entered his fifth-grade year and Daniel became a kindergartner was so busy, I didn’t have much opportunity to agonize over Michael’s offer. Our days were filled with work, last-minute excursions, and photography appointments.
    I had made a modest name for myself as an amateur shutterbug, and a few people called me regularly to do on-location portraits of their kids. Some families liked to use their own backyards or homes, but I had also accumulated a list of great sites for photo shoots that included an abandoned barn, an old train bridge, and a little-known corner of the local park. I lugged an ever-growing pile of junk with me and used my imagination to position the kids in charming, unusual ways. I loved it.
    Simon, on the other hand, claimed that he hated every minute of it, but that didn’t stop me from dragging him along to my photography sessions. He was a huge help, and the kids loved him even though he didn’t solicit their attention or affection. Simon was simply magnetic that way.
    “You’re coming with me tomorrow, right?” I asked him the night before I had my least favorite clients scheduled.
    He sighed dramatically, but twelve hours later I was watching out of the corner of my eye as Simon inched a little closer on his knees and jammed the sticky wand back into the purple plastic bottle for another go-round.
    “I need more bubbles, Si!” I called before disappearing behind the bulky camera. My Canon was outfitted with an impressive zoom lens, even though I was up close and personal with my young subjects. “I want it to look like they’re swimming in bubbles.”
    “You need a machine,” Simon sighed, blowing carefully into the saw-toothed circle. A flood of iridescent froth surged from the wand and cast dozens of rainbow-sparkled bubbles across the cheeks of the little girls in front of him. The younger one, a curly-haired carbon copy of Thomas at two, giggled and reached for the magical spheres. The camera made a series of rewarding metallic clicks.
    Simon blew