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I’ll call you with a number and, if we can agree, and I’m sure we can, I can have my people out here on Friday with a check and the equipment.”
    That was a lot of words. Cassidy couldn’t figure out a way to make much sense of them when he ran them together like that. “What are you two talking about?”
    “The nursery is buying the trees,” Mitch said.
    “People do that?” She stared up into the heavy branches
    “All the time. So long as they’re healthy and we can save the root systems, we use them for landscaping, for shade on the property, for bulk sales.”
    Whatever any of that meant. “How do you even lift it?”
    “With a crane and a team of people none of whom are me. That’s Spence’s specialty.”
    “Great news, but I have to get going.” Allan was already moving. He shouted his comments over his shoulder as he broke into a near run. “You stay out of the house. It’s locked up tight and you don’t have the key. We’ll meet tomorrow morning for breakfast at Schmidt’s.”
    She’s never seen her stepfather move that fast and she’d seen him rush in and break up the one and only teen drinking party she’d attended as if he were tied to a tornado. “Where are you going?”
    He gave her a backhanded wave right before he disappeared around the side of the building. “See you at six.”
    Wait… “Six?”
    “Even I think that was weird. He’s acting out of character, and who eats that early?” Mitch asked.
    She could think of a lot words to describe Allan’s reaction. Weird struck her as tame. “I’m getting kind of tired of the men around here telling me when to meet them to eat. But I’m worried about him.”
    “He’s scattered, but—”
    “That is the understatement of the decade.” She pointed as she talked. “Look around. The grass is too high. The house needs a scraping and some paint. I see piles of old wood and dead flowers. This is not the Allan Huntsman I know. Not the same guy who didn’t let me wear shoes in the house because I’d ‘dirty up’ the place.”
    Mitch dug his hands deep into this jacket pockets. “He’s had a hard time since losing your mom.”
    “We both have, Mitch.” She spun around. The small patch of land set off by a waist-high fence sat off to their right. No chipped paint there. A bouquet of fresh, out-of-season purple lilacs filled the vase next to the plaque. “That’s the one thing he has kept up.”
    They walked in silence to the informal gravesite. Mitch opened the gate and followed her into the small space. She wiped her hands on her jeans then folded her arms. A second later she unfolded them again. She couldn’t stop moving or catch her breath. Every part of her trembled as if on the verge of blowing apart.
    Then Mitch crouched down. With a gentle hand, he skimmed his fingers over the raised writing on the grave marker. The move was so caring, so reverent, that her world centered again.
    “I don’t think I realized she was buried here,” he said in a whisper, the type usually reserved for church or a solemn occasion.
    “We had to get an exception to allow it.”
    “We?”
    She squatted next to him, balancing on the balls of her feet. “I stood at the back of the church.”
    He finally looked at her. “Excuse me?”
    “I was there, at the funeral and burial. I didn’t want her last day to be about me, because both my mom and Allan deserved better than that, but I came. Of course I did.” The nicknames and catchy phrases about her life were bad enough. The idea people would think she’d abandoned her family at the end was a hole that continuously burned in her gut. “Allan kept insisting it didn’t matter what anyone said, but deep down I think he knew it was the right decision and felt relief at not having to answer a lot of questions about me on such a horrible day.”
    “I had no idea.”
    Cassidy brushed a few leaves away from the marker. “Not how you expected The Chosen One to act?”
    “I’ve never called