CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
OLIVIA
May 10
THE AIR DRIFTING INTO THE CAR smells like salt and earth. Wheat-colored hills undulate toward the rocky coastline of the Pacific, bisected by the black ribbon of the road. In the backseat, Bella and Nicholas are listening to audio books with their headphones, the silence punctuated by occasional complaints of boredom.
“We’re almost there,” I assure Nicholas, when he whines about being hungry.
Almost there.
Dean turns the rental car onto the long stretch of road leading toward a cluster of buildings nestled near a swathe of artichoke fields and orchards. My body tightens with anxiety as we get closer. It looks the same, of course, though there’s a new building near the garden. A few trucks are parked outside the garage, their beds loaded with wooden furniture.
“Is this a farm?” Nicholas asks.
“Sort of,” I reply. “There are a few cats, chickens, and goats, but no horses or cows or anything. People just live and work together here. I stayed here a couple of times when I was younger. It’s a very special place.”
“I like goats,” Bella remarks.
After Dean parks the car and we all get out, I inhale a deep breath of the delicious air, feeling like it’s flooding my veins with renewed energy. After a lengthy lecture about precautions, Dr. Anderson gave me his blessing for this week-long trip to Santa Cruz, especially since the chemo drugs I’m on now have a milder effect on my system.
Dean had been harder to convince, but after he researched “travel and chemotherapy,” and drove Dr. Anderson crazy with questions, he’d agreed that getting away would be good for us. Especially getting away to Twelve Oaks, the place where goodness is part of the earth.
I shade my eyes from the sun and look toward the main building. Dean comes around the side of the car, his gaze scanning the landscape. Already there’s less tension in the set of his shoulders.
“This is beautiful,” he says.
I slide my hand to his lower back. “I’m so glad we came.”
The door to the building opens, and a medium-height man with a gray-streaked beard and long hair pulled back into a ponytail approaches. Happiness lights inside me as I start toward him, even as my anxiety intensifies. My friends at home have gotten used to me looking so different, but I haven’t seen North or anyone at Twelve Oaks in ages and—
“Come here, Liv.” North strides toward me, his arms outstretched and a wide smile splitting through his beard.
Every fear and insecurity falls away the instant his arms close around me. Tears fill my eyes and spill down my cheeks, but for the first time in a long time, they are tears of happiness. I hug North with all my strength, feeling as if the embrace alone can—and will—sustain me.
We ease back at the same time to look at each other. Gazing at North’s weathered face and into his warm brown eyes, still so familiar and dear, is like remembering only the good parts of my past. He reaches up to put his hands on the sides of my head.
“Welcome home, Liv,” he says.
I smile through my tears, a smile that feels like it comes from deep inside me.
“Thank you. I’m so glad to be back.”
The sound of Bella laughing finally prompts me to ease away from North and turn toward my husband and children. Dean is standing a short distance away, keeping an eye on Nicholas and Bella. He approaches us with a smile.
“How’ve you been, North? It’s great to see you again.”
“Likewise, my good man.” North puts his hand into Dean’s, and they pull each other into an embrace that includes a bit of manly backslapping. “Really glad you both made it back here. Asha has you all set up in the house, if you want to get settled in.”
We turn to the car as Nicholas and Bella come running up, after having chased a skittish kitten around the side of the garage. They met North in France, but don’t remember him well. I reintroduce them, and North gives Nicholas a handshake and tells Bella he hopes she’ll help him in the flower garden.
As we walk toward the main house, the children dashing ahead of us, I feel the magic of Twelve Oaks taking effect, wrapping around my family like the comfort of my old quilt. Giving us back to ourselves.
Though things have changed at Twelve Oaks over the years, the rhythm of the place is the same. The residents all have job assignments and work shifts throughout the day, the children are either home-schooled or leave each morning for local public schools, and there is a constant, easy flow of activity like a river.
Everyone greets us with warmth and a genuine sense of welcome—there are about six families whom I remember from my time here over fifteen years ago, and new groups of people treat us like old friends. No one says anything about my lack of hair or my illness.
Dean volunteers both himself and Nicholas to help in the apple orchard, while I work in the kitchen and—at North’s request—spend time curating the books in the library, which was my job when I stayed here after college.
Bella is at first wary of being away from me, but she slowly warms to Asha, who cares for the younger children, and before long they’re playing duck-duck-goose out in the grass. At noon, everyone piles back into the main house for lunch.
Dean and Nicholas return, triumphantly bearing a basket of apples, and we sit at the trestle tables in the dining room to eat fragrant bread fresh from the oven and homemade vegetable soup.
After lunch, Dean, Nicholas, and Bella play board games in the library while I go in search of North. As expected, I find him in his woodworking shop.
The smell of sawdust fills the air. The tables are covered with woodworking tools, as well as dozens of finished and half-finished bowls, boxes, and toys.
North is sitting on a stool, a work light illuminating the table in front of him as he sands a small piece of wood.
“What are you working on?” I hitch myself onto the stool beside him.
He holds up the piece. It’s an intricately carved chess piece—a knight on horseback. I take it from North and examine the details.
“It’s beautiful. Is it a commission?”
“No, but we’re renting out space in a few downtown shops, so I thought I’d put it up there.” He nods toward the other pieces on the table, all finely carved and crafted, and the smooth, glossy chessboard.
“What kind of wood did you use?”
“Walnut and maple.”
I pick up a pawn and study it, rubbing my finger over the curves.
“When I was in Russia, I saw this chess set that had been made by a guy who was a prisoner in the gulag,” North says. “Looked like a regular set, you know, maybe of wood. Then I found out it had been made of breadcrumbs. The prisoners would chew bits of bread and press them together to form the pieces so they’d have a way to pass the time. Still standing all these years later.”
I try to picture it—a prisoner carefully sculpting an entire chess set out of bread. I wonder how long it took to make, how many games the prisoner played. How many he won.
“Aside from knowing it was a work of art, in a sense,” North continues, “I thought it was amazing this guy who probably got one piece of bread per day would sacrifice eating it to create something. In the damned gulag, even.”
I do that, I think with sudden clarity.
Okay, not entire chess sets out of chewed-up breadcrumbs, but chocolate swirl cupcakes and lemon parfaits, and crayon pictures of hedgehogs with my daughter, and multi-colored Lego fortresses with my son, and drawings of Paris, butterflies, and gardens where everything blooms bright. Even in my own personal gulag of cancer, I create things too.
North hands me the knight and points to a clean cloth. I pick up the cloth and clean the sawdust off the piece. North begins to smooth away the rough edges on the queen.
“You’re doing all right, then?” he asks.
“Most of the time.” I shrug. “But it’s rough. Scary. I won’t know if the cancer has spread more until I have scans after chemo. I have dreams where it’s digging into all different parts of my body, like barbed wire. And even with a good prognosis, I still wake up sometimes wondering if I’ll be alive this time next year.”
This is what I love about North. He doesn’t say, “We all wonder that.” He doesn’t tell me that of course I’ll be alive. He doesn’t try to tell me everything will be okay or that other people have it much worse than I do. He doesn’t tell me not to worry.
He just nods.
We sit in silence for a while—him carving chess pieces and me polishing them. I’m cloaked in the warm, comfortable feeling I had so many years ago, when the world had jagged edges and Twelve Oaks was the only place where I knew they couldn’t hurt me.
I know differently now. Safety isn’t a physical place—it’s knowing you are unconditionally loved and accepted, and it’s a feeling of peace that you somehow cling to even in the darkest of times. Not that I always do, but I’m learning to try.
The love and acceptance part, though… I’ve got that.
“He is a good guy,” North says, tilting his head to the door. “You were right.”
I smile. “It’s hard to feel sorry for myself when I look at my family. I have so much. How can I not be grateful?”
“You can be grateful and human at the same time,” North says. “And it’s okay to shake your fist at the universe every now and then. The universe is tough. It can take some cursing.”
“Oh, I’ve done my fair share of that,” I admit. “Sometimes it feels good, too. Turns out I like being a bit of a bad-ass.”
North grins. “You remember when I told you once not to come back to Twelve Oaks too often?”
“I remember. You wanted this wounded baby bird to spread her wings, and you thought if she came flying crookedly back to Twelve Oaks, she would never leave. Never learn what she was made of.”
“Yeah.” North pats my shoulder. “You did good, Liv. Soared like an eagle.”
I extend my fist, and he bumps his against mine.
“And I thought you would never leave Twelve Oaks, but off you went to walk around the world,” I say. “What brought you back?”
He shrugs. “Always wanted to end up back home. That’s part of the reason you travel, I think. To go, but also to come back.”
I learned that too, before Dean and I left for Paris. I could go, happily, off on new adventures because I knew he and I would return to Mirror Lake.
But I also learned that life isn’t always about coming and going, leaving and returning. Sometimes, like now, it’s just about being.
A campfire burns at the heart of the Twelve Oaks commune, the flames leaping and dancing. I sit beside North, who is whittling slowly at a piece of wood, long shavings falling at his feet. One of the other residents is playing the guitar, and the sweet strains filter through the smoky air.
Dean brushes his hand against the back of my neck as he sits next to me, his warm thigh pressing against mine.
“Both sound asleep,” he says. “They were out within five minutes. Must be the fresh air.”
“We have a booth at the farmers’ market tomorrow morning, if you want to join us,” North says. “Then you could take the kids down to the beach. Supposed to be a beautiful day. There are some inflatable rings in the shed you could take with you.”
“We’ll do that, thanks.” I imagine digging my toes into the sand and feeling the sun on my bare legs.
“Come on.” Dean tugs on my hand. “Let’s get a good night’s sleep so we can be up early.”
We return to the main building. I check on Nicholas and Bella before going into the adjoining bedroom where Dean and I are staying.
He’s standing on the other side of the room, unbuttoning his shirt, and I’m struck with a memory of watching him do exactly that the moment before I made the easiest and truest confession of my life—“I love you.”
Oh, how I did. How I do.
Dean glances up. Our eyes meet as if we’re both remembering the same thing. And then he holds out his arms.
Light and love flood through me, infusing me with strength. I run across the room and leap into Dean’s arms, wrapping my legs around his waist and burying my face in his shoulder.
Our bodies fit together beautifully, my thinner curves still yielding to the hard planes of his chest, his body heat flowing into my soul. His arms close around me, strong as steel and warm as sunlight.
“Ah, my beauty,” he whispers. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’m here. I’ve always been here.”
“Don’t leave.”
“Never.”
We spend five days at Twelve Oaks, absorbing the sun and salt-laced air into our blood. We swim in the sea, work in the orchards and at the farmers’ market, explore downtown Santa Cruz, make s’mores on the campfire, and pick vegetables in the garden.
On the day of our departure, I watch Bella hug Asha, watch Nicholas laughing as he and North run after an escaped chicken. Dean loads Bella’s purple backpack into the trunk and slams it shut.
“Ready?” he asks me.
I turn to him, loving the way he moves closer, the way he knows without hesitation that I need him to touch me, that I want to touch him. He pulls me against his chest.
“There is no better present you could have given me.” I rub my cheek against his shirt, inhaling his scents of wind and shaving soap. “Thank you.”
“I see why you love it here.” He presses his lips to the top of my head. “And I knew you needed some time with your BFF.”
I squeeze him around the waist. “And my BHH.”
“What’s that?”
“Big Hot Husband.”
Dean’s chuckle brushes against my temple. We part slowly as North comes toward us with a box in his hands. He extends it to Dean.
“Practice,” he orders. “When you come back, I’ll challenge you to a game.”
“Deal.”
We say our goodbyes—bittersweet and happy at the same time. As Dean drives down the long road leading to the highway, we wave at the crowd of Twelve Oaks residents who gathered to see us off.
Dean turns the media player on. Jack Johnson’s “Better Together” comes through the speakers, and Bella soon joins in singing.
I roll down the window and take off my scarf to let the cool, sea-salted wind brush against my scalp, my face, my skin.
It’s in your name. North’s words from years ago echo in my mind. It’s both the easiest and hardest thing in the world.
Olivia… Liv… live.
Yes. I will.