The Tree Keeper's Promise: A Novel (A Shafer Farm Romance Book 2) Read online

  “No. Nothing like that,” Mark reassured her. “Well, it does have to do with the trees. But we can get married when we want. When you want.”

  Mark continued. “Angela, the trees have an energy. I’ve noticed I can feel it. What I mean is, there’s only one keeper at a time. And Papa wasn’t ready last year.”

  “Ready for what?” She looked confused and for good reason.

  “Let me start over. There’s a promise every keeper makes when he becomes the keeper. I didn’t even know about it. Papa said he wasn’t ready last year, but since I asked to know everything there was to know, he said it was time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Time for me to make the promise.”

  Their steps were unison, their hands linked by a few fingers. Angela lifted her chin and looked straight ahead on the rocky trail. “What does it mean?”

  Mark inhaled, hoping the fresh autumn air would give him the nerve he needed to say it out loud.

  “The trees have an energy and feelings, and sometimes I can feel or sense them. It doesn’t sound rational, and I’ll understand if you don’t buy it. I mean, I don’t know if I would. Maybe that was why it took another year for me to be ready. If I hadn’t felt some things—even gotten ideas from the trees, I might have thought Papa was making it up.”

  Angela was quiet.

  Mark waited. Was she having second thoughts? “It’s not like the trees talk to me or anything. Like Papa says, ‘They don’t speak English.’” He tried to laugh, but his voice trailed off.

  She still didn’t say anything.

  “Look, do you want some time to think about it? Maybe I should have waited to propose, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know.”

  “Have you already made the promise, then?” she asked, but he couldn’t tell if there were pain or sadness or confusion in her eyes.

  “Yes. It wasn’t a big deal, though. I mean it was, but it was just Papa, and I repeated after him, and that was it.” Mark listened to his own words, wondering how they sounded to her. His insecurity took over.

  “You don’t have to marry me. If all this sounds too ... too far-fetched, I understand. We can call it off.”

  Angela stopped walking.

  “Don’t ever say that to me again. Unless you don’t want to marry me. I know I don’t have to marry you. But I love you. And we are not calling it off.” She began walking again.

  Mark caught up to her and reached for her hand. He looked into her eyes. “You mean it, don’t you?” he asked.

  Her eyes were wet. She nodded.

  “What do you think about it—about me and the trees?”

  “I don’t know yet. But when I think of what we’ve been through together, I can’t deny the miracles I’ve seen. I love you, and I’ve known from day one that you and the trees were a package deal.” She had the faintest of smiles as she said this almost playfully. “Hold on a minute. What exactly did you promise?” she asked.

  “To keep the trees from all forms of danger ... with my body, heart, and mind,” he said nonchalantly.

  “Just your body, heart, and mind? Is that all?” she asked but even more lighthearted than before. She pointed to his left leg. “So I can expect more of that?”

  “I don’t make a habit of this, no,” he said. “But it does mean I’ll take care of the trees and land so our family can have a home.” He thought of Papa’s words to Nana.

  They’d come to the end of Charley’s loop and could either walk back the way they’d come or hike through the chasm. There was a brook here, usually a small one tucked into the side of a rock wall next to the path. But with the week of heavy rain, it ran fuller and louder and had created a wider path. More like a stream. And by the look of the mud patterns, it had probably been a river last week.

  “The sound—I love how loud it is. It has a way of drowning out everything. It clears my head, you know?” Angela said.

  “We don’t have to hike back through the chasm. We could stay here for a while and go back using the loop trail again.” The chasm had some rockier parts—Devil’s Coffin and Lover’s Leap, not to mention Fat Man’s Misery, the tomahawk-sliced rock tunnel. But Angela insisted. Yes, she loved the brook, but she hadn’t come all the way to this chasm she’d read about just to turn around and go home without actually seeing it.

  On they hiked. Descended, to be more specific. Though only a quarter of a mile in length, some granite walls stretched seventy feet high. They passed by another stream and a good number of felled trees.

  They were hiking through the chasm at the perfect time as the granite walls shielded them from full exposure to the sun. It must have been at least ten degrees cooler here.

  “The irony isn’t lost on me.”

  “What irony?” Mark asked.

  “You bring me to Purgatory Chasm,” she said it with a smirk, “to plan our wedding.”

  “Look, I can’t help it if one of the prettiest places in Sutton has the same name as some after-life limbo.”

  “You mean a state of punishment and suffering.”

  Mark held up both hands. “You liked the trail and the brook, didn’t you? I don’t know where they got the name.”

  “It will be fine. I won’t think of it as omen or anything.”

  “How about you choose the date, then? Fair enough?” Mark asked.

  This question came at the same time Angela stepped on some uneven rocks and almost lost her footing. Mark grabbed her arm and held her long enough for her to regain her balance.

  “Thanks. What do you mean, me choose? We both need to agree.”

  Mark waited until Angela had a taken a few more steps ahead of him and then suggested a double wedding with Papa and Dorothy.

  Angela spun around, almost losing her balance again. “Are you out of your mind? That’s in two weeks.”

  “We’ve known each other four seasons. Wasn’t that the requirement?

  “Yes. No. Sort of. I’m not even entertaining this,” Angela said with another deliberate step on a rock nearer to the even ground.

  “How about November?” he said dryly.

  “Mark, be serious. I like your idea of me being able to choose the date. It needs to be sometime next year.”

  “Next year?”

  “It’s October. That’s not as far away as it sounds.”

  “Fine, if you want a January wedding, it’s a little cold, but it could work,” Mark said.

  Angela stopped and looked at him more closely. “You skipped December? Why? Why not December if you’re in such a hurry?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It may have something to do with a little tree farm we manage. Even I know better than to try to pull off a wedding in December.”

  “That’s the most sense you’ve spoken since we started this discussion,” Angela said. “Since you proposed to me on the autumnal equinox, what if we get married on the spring equinox? That’s in March, isn’t it?”

  Mark took a drink of water, giving himself time to think. He’d already made up his mind. They would get married on the day Angela wanted.

  “It’s the twentieth. Is that what you want?”

  “Most people plan a summer wedding, a June wedding, but June doesn’t mean anything to us, does it?”

  They stood on a slab of rock on a narrow part of the trail and had to move into the brush to allow a father with several sons to climb past them. The sun was rising higher in the sky.

  “That’s when we shear the trees.”

  Angela remembered her shearing accident and shuddered. Mark had only needed three stitches, but still.

  “No. Not June. March and the equinox are perfect,” she said. “It feels right, doesn’t it?”

  They took deliberate steps down the side of the trail, being sure to wipe their shoes on the brush and gravel so no wetness accumulated. Flat rocks lived up famously to the cliché “slippery when wet.”

  The trail opened up to large expanse of a granite slab, half shaded, half warmed by the sun. A retired co
uple had claimed part of the cooler section, so Mark angled toward the opposite side where there was mostly sun and spotty patches of shade.

  “Let’s take a rest,” Mark said. “I think March will be great. Right before planting season.” The month was fine, but something else troubled him.

  “Angela, what about your ring? I can buy another one.”

  “We talked about this. No. You built a music studio and dance floor for us.”

  “For you,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  Mark watched her as she said it. Not a hint of sadness or resentment. “But you need a ring.”

  “I don’t want you to buy a new one. The other ring could still turn up,” she said, taking a drink of her water.

  Mark wondered if she really believed that. How could she?

  “Angela, I had the ring in my pocket during the flood. I waded through sludge. How could it turn up?”

  “Let’s give it till March. How about that?”

  What could Mark say in the face of such optimism? In the face of such beauty?

  “I love you,” he said.

  Chapter 19

  The farm was only a ten-minute drive on Route 146 from the chasm. Angela watched the trees come into sight through the passenger window. How much her life had changed since she and Caroline had come looking for a Christmas tree last year. She wasn’t frantic to pay rent, she had her own home, and she and her mom were on speaking terms. And the most unexpected change of all: Mark in her life, with all his kindness and goodness and love.

  She couldn’t deny the miracle of their meeting, her heart opening up enough to get to know him better, and the connection of their families. Too many times to count over the last ten months she’d thought of those Shafer miracle trees.

  “So was Papa serious about the trees causing love matches?” she asked as they approached the farm.

  “I think so. Why do you ask?”

  “He said we could have a wedding before Christmas, that’s all,” Angela said while still staring out the window.

  “I’m telling you, November is an option,” Mark said playfully.

  “Not an option. Two months isn’t even enough time to find a dress,” Angela said.

  “He was putting pressure on me, that’s all. Don’t let it get to you,” Mark insisted. “We decided on March. March twentieth.”

  “There might still be snow on the ground,” she said mostly to herself.

  Mark parked his truck, and they were well into the farmhouse when Mark asked why that might be a problem.

  “Just thinking about the reception. It would be lovely behind the farmhouse, next to Donna’s barn.”

  “Outside in March it will be too cold,” he said. “If we’re careful about how many people we invite and empty these two rooms of their furniture, it could work.”

  Angela turned and looked at him like he had spoken a foreign language. “We’ll be getting married at the church downtown. The First Congregational, same one as Papa and Dorothy.”

  She could tell this surprised Mark. He crossed over to the cash register and seemed interested in some papers on the counter.

  “Mark?”

  “Okay. Sure,” he said.

  His sudden disinterest in the topic raised her suspicions.

  “Are you sure it’s okay?”

  “I thought you’d said your mother had insisted on a big church wedding before with—and that you didn’t want that again.”

  With Todd. It’s what he was about to say. But he hadn’t.

  “You’re right. I did say that. But the important word there is big. Our church wedding will be small, with the people who know and love us. Much more intimate.”

  He didn’t respond right away. Papa and Dorothy came through the side door, speaking to each other and laughing. They looked up, and Dorothy’s eyes met Angela’s. She looked back and forth between her and Mark.

  “Alberto, come with me to the barn.”

  “But you said you wanted to start fixin’ dinner.”

  “And I will—after we visit the barn. We should check on Caroline and see how her painting is coming along,” she said, giving Papa a stern look.

  They walked out the front door.

  Mark shuffled the mail and some papers and finally said, “Maybe it’s for the best. With all the time we spend here, why not have the ceremony somewhere else?”

  The tone in Mark’s voice bothered Angela all the way home. His concession seemed forced and insincere—something Mark usually never was. And why had he assumed the wedding would take place at the farm? Couldn’t he have asked her what she thought?

  But then again, she hadn’t asked him what he thought.

  Caroline broke her out of her self-absorbed ruminations.

  “Mom, look at what I made today with Mrs. Shaw.” Caroline held up a miniature ceramic house. The hand-painted sign above the door read “Ice Cream Shoppe.”

  “It has this space in the back. We can put a light in there so light will shine in the windows. Can it go on the table by the sofa?”

  “Sure, but we’ll have to put it near an outlet,” Angela said.

  “Or maybe on the kitchen counter by the phone. We can have a little bit of Christmas in every room!”

  Angela smiled to herself. Knowing Caroline, she’d change her mind three times before Christmas anyway.

  “Remember you wanted them to go under the tree?” Angela asked.

  “Yes, but since we only have these two, it won’t be much of a village,” Caroline said.

  “Funny you should say that.”

  “What does that mean?” her daughter asked with growing excitement.

  “What would you say if Mrs. Shaw gave us a few more pieces?”

  “I’d say I love Mrs. Shaw! That’s awesome. Wait, I have something,” she said as she ran to her room and back, yelling to no one in particular that Christmas was going to rock!

  When she returned, she showed her mother a small hand mirror. “We can use this for a lake. And Mrs. Shaw said she had some batting stuff that could look like snow. Also, maybe a place in the center for the nativity!”

  “Like Bethlehem?” Angela asked, trying to keep up with her daughter’s excitement.

  Caroline gasped. “Bethlehem! Mom, you’re so right. This can be the little town of Bethlehem.”

  “You know that Bethlehem didn’t have snow, right?” Angela cautioned.

  “Who cares,” she said.

  Angela should have seen that one coming. Even if Caroline was missing the point, she wasn’t going to be deterred if the village houses resembled something from a Norman Rockwell painting circa 1920, rather than an ancient Middle-Eastern town like Bethlehem. Obviously they weren’t striving for historical accuracy.

  “Also, there are a few more pieces left to paint.”

  “I’ll take care of that!”

  Angela picked up the mail and sat in her wicker chair on the screened porch. A few bills, a neighborhood coupon book, and a picture of a fountain and flowers. She turned the postcard over—the Botanical Garden in Cologne, Germany.

  Hi, Angela,

  I have a few minutes before I go down for breakfast. I could eat in my room, but there is something to getting up and dressed every day that is supposed to help with the jet lag. I had hoped the six-hour time difference wouldn’t be this disorienting.

  We visited the Botanical Garden yesterday. We tour the Picasso collection tomorrow—not my favorite, but I will not leave Cologne without seeing it. And today we’ll visit the chocolate museum.

  I want my money back for those French lessons—no one could understand a word I said when we visited Marseille. Whenever I spoke, people looked at me either very confused or with great alarm. Nancy says my German is much better than my French, but so far everyone here speaks English with me. Which is a great relief. I didn’t account for conjugating verbs while jet-lagged.

  Hope you and Caroline are well. Are you still engaged? Do you have a date? A ring?

&nbs
p; Yours truly,

  Mother

  Angela turned the card over and stared at the gardens, so lush and manicured. She turned it back over and reread her mother’s words.

  A date? A ring? Half a world away with everything she’s ever wanted to see and she is still trying to plan my wedding.

  But then again, maybe these weren’t controlling, pressure-filled questions. Maybe she truly cared.

  There wasn’t time to figure it out. She had to help Caroline get ready for Papa and Dorothy’s wedding.

  As she stashed the mail by her purse on the counter, she saw the small slip of paper from her trip to the beach. She pulled it out—the phone number for Florinda’s cousin. She’d already had it for a month and hadn’t called. It had been a busy month, with “little” things like a flood, getting engaged, and sending her mother off to Europe.

  But what she wouldn’t give to hear Florinda’s voice. To talk to her. Why? She didn’t know all the reasons she meant so much to her. As her piano teacher for five years, they certainly spent many hours together during her lessons, but it was more than that. Florinda had sincerely cared about her. She had taken the time to get to know what Angela did and didn’t like. She not only knew what her talents were, she believed in her. And the more she thought about it, Angela could remember the feeling of having someone care about her dreams, the feeling of having someone want her happiness, her dreams to come true.

  Maybe they could talk and she could tell her about Mark and the farm and the trees. She knew how Florinda would smile if she told her she was happy for the first time in a long time. Or maybe for the first time ever.

  She looked at the number again. Would Florinda be as happy to talk to me as I would be to talk to her? After all, she hasn’t reached out to me in all these years.

  They were ugly, unbidden thoughts, but they did the trick. She folded the paper and put it back in her purse. Maybe another time.

  Angela and Mark entered the church with slowing steps. Their conversation on the drive had hovered between strained and nonexistent. Mark hadn’t reached for her hand. She hadn’t reached for his. But here they were, entering the church for Papa’s wedding to Dorothy.