Eighteen
Kristmas
“It’s real. It’s really real.”
Maggie stops short, just as we pass through the break in the trees that opens up on a small clearing. In the middle of it is a lone oak tree.
This is where my dad built my tree house.
“Dad was jealous, right?” She looks away from the tree long enough to gain confirmation. “He wished his dad would build him a treehouse,” says, feeding me bits of story in hopes that I’ll pick up the thread.
“He was.” I nod, letting my gaze sweep across the structure. Its sturdy roof. The retractable ladder. The salvaged windows and door he installed because anything worth doing is worth doing right. ”Mad was so jealous he could spit.” I laugh at the memory. How hard he tried no to show how envious he was when I showed him what my father had built for me. “Your Grandpa McAllister isn’t a treehouse dad.” Saying that makes me wonder if they know about her. If my mom and Mad’s father know that he has a daughter and just didn’t tell me. Putting it aside, I focus on the story. “I told him that I’d share treehouse ownership with him on one condition—that he had to use the password Terabithia, every time he wanted to come up when I was here.”
“Because Bridge to Terabithia was your favorite book when you were a kid.” Maggie nods like she’s some wise sage. “Dad read it to me. I liked it, but I like his stories about you better.”
“He read you Bridge to Terabithia?” Mad always hated that book because of how it ended. Hated that the little girl in the story died and left her friend all alone.
Maggie nods. “He gets sad when he reads it. He says it’s because it’s a sad book but I think he gets sad because he misses you.” She quirks her lips like she’s not sure if she’s explaining correctly. “Do you miss my dad sometime?”
“I miss your dad all the time.” It’s the wrong thing to say. Something I shouldn’t say because I gave up the right to say things like that a long time ago.
Maggie the Sage gives me another look. “You should tell him that.” Before I can answer her, she tugs on my hand. “Can we go up?” She asks, her wide blue eyes full of hope and aimed at the treehouse in front of us.
“’Fraid not.” I soften my refusal with a wry smile. “I’m not sure it’s safe. It’s been a long time since there’s been a treehouse dad around to take care of it.”
“Because your dad died.” It’s not a question. She says it like she knows, the hope in her eyes shifting to something deeper. Something that makes it hard for me to look at her. “When you were little like me.”
I swallow hard and nod, looking away from her to aim my gaze at the stand of trees on the other side of the clearing. “Yeah.”
“My dad died too—well, my first dad died.”
All the air rushes out of my lungs. “Your first dad?” I say it carefully, wanting to make sure I understand her.
“Yeah.” She tilts her head to the side and squints. “I wasn’t even born yet so I don’t remember him, but I used to get scared when Dad went away,” she says, pulling her hand from mine so she can squat in the snow. “I was afraid he’d leave to go be a soldier and get killed too.” She digs her hand into the drift and scoops up a handful of fluffy snow. Standing she tosses it up in the air, just to watch it fall again. “But he’s home for good now, so we don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
“We?”
“You and me.”
As soon as she says it my throat slams shut and my chest goes tight, squeezing and pushing the air from my lungs because she’s wrong. When you love someone, there is always a reason to be afraid. That they’ll go away and you’ll never see them again. That something horrible will happen and they’ll be taken away from you. That they’ll just stop loving you back and leave.
But I can’t tell her that.
So I smile at her instead. “You want to make snow angels?” I say, jogging my head toward the clearing where the ground is covered in a pristine blanket of white snow, turned a soft glittering orange by the last of the late afternoon sun. “Your dad and I used to make them all the time.”
Maggie just grins at me and falls back in the snow.