Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 59947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 300(@200wpm)___ 240(@250wpm)___ 200(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59947 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 300(@200wpm)___ 240(@250wpm)___ 200(@300wpm)
That tendon will be the best place to cut, but it’s out of his reach, even with the additional eighteen inches offered by the hacksaw blade.
“This must be one of the first times in your life you’re not tall enough to do something.” I pat his shoulder. “But I believe in you. You’re a structural engineer. Surely you’ll build a ladder out of twigs.”
He casts me a look that says my innocent tone hasn’t fooled him. “Yeah, and what my fancy degree tells me is that the wood is too green to snap, and I’m also not strong or heavy enough to rip it free.” Reed eyes the limb again, then nods. “All right. I can’t get up there. We’ll bring it down here. Hold this saw and step back for a few minutes.”
I do, watching as he plants his boot on the end of the dangling bough, pushing it down toward the snow. Then stepping again, a little higher along the branch, forcing that section down into the snow. It almost looks like he’s trying to climb the bough like a ladder…but his weight is bringing it down, instead. The limb creaks overhead—then screeches, as the split deepens.
“You are ripping it free,” I tell him.
He shakes his head. “It’s only ripping along the grain. It’ll stop where that limb gets thicker. But then the whole thing should start bending.”
I look at it again, realize what he means. “And then we’ll have a catapult. Too bad there’s no nearby castle to breach.”
He huffs out one of his dry laughs, stepping higher up the bough—and the bough comes down farther. “You do realize it would be catapulting me?”
“That would be the whole point,” I say, though I hadn’t realized. “You breach the castle and fight everyone with your bare hands. Will my weight help keep it down?”
“It’s not a worry. This thing isn’t throwing me anywhere. And when it gets low enough, I’ll have you saw—because the more tension in that limb up there, the more unsteady this end of the branch will be. Since I’m standing on it, it’d be a bad idea to start sawing it myself.”
“All right. Anything I can do now?”
“Yeah. Tell me what you meant by your mom not making the effort. You’re talking about when you were kids?”
“Mostly.” I’m a little distracted watching the limb overhead begin to bend. “Because that’s when it matters most, right?“
“Probably. Was this after you started pursuing art? Because it sounds like before that she was pretty damn involved, pushing you where she wanted you to be.”
“She did both, weirdly. Pushed me and also didn’t make the effort. Looking back, it makes more sense to me now. Pushing me was really for her. So she put in effort. But anything else that was just for Lauryn and me, like showing up for volleyball games or our track meets, or school plays, or birthdays—or Christmas. It was just, nope. She was busy—not at her job, really, but with all the related volunteering.”
He pauses and spears me with an intense look. “She didn’t do Christmas?”
“Not after Dad died. But again, I thought it was the grief. At first.”
“Ours was different after my mom, too. We had all the stuff—the tree, the nice dinner, and my dad would spend a shitload on my presents—but I can’t say there was any joy in it anymore.”
An unexpected pang strikes my heart as I imagine a younger Reed surrounded by gifts but lacking the sweetest part of Christmas. And knowing he was lacking it. “The first few years, my grandparents showed up for a little while on Christmas Eve and brought stuff—my dad’s parents. Then my mom had a falling out with that side of the family. I don’t know why. But I haven’t seen them in a long time. My grandpa on her side, I never met. And her mom, my grandma…I get the feeling she’s a lot like my mom is. Not putting in effort unless it benefits her personally or makes her look good. She remarried and has another set of grandkids anyway.”
“Did she ever explain why it changed? Christmas, I mean.”
“She said it was because the holidays had all become too fake and commercialized—and that the true meaning of Christmas just got buried under all the tinsel and wrapping paper. Which is true, but a lot of people don’t celebrate it for the religious aspect anyway. Instead they get together for…I don’t know, togetherness. That’s how we celebrated when my dad was alive. But after, even togetherness wasn’t reason enough. And not just for the holidays. Any day. If we needed her to attend something, Mom always had something else to do, something more important. She was always busy. Because she never said no to the school and always said no to us. But even when she didn’t have an event scheduled, she’d say that she was too tired after being so busy. Which might have been true, but we learned really quickly we weren’t worth her time—or any money. So it was like she used the school as justification for being as uncaring and uncharitable as possible toward her own family.”