The Secret (Magnolia Grove #4) - SERIES COMPLETE

Chapter 7 - {Holden}

SITTING ON THE hood of my car at the lookout over the hot springs, I gaze at the tree I've come to call mine. It's a coconut tree. Out of fifteen hundred species of palm trees, it's the only one that produces coconut.

The fruit doesn't sink, but rather has the ability to float across an entire ocean. The tree's life expectancy is about eighty years, and during that time it will produce anywhere between two and six thousand coconuts. And from those fruits come over three hundred uses from food to hydration to herbal and medicinal properties. Science is my favorite subject, but I didn't learn these facts in school. I've been researching different trees, trying to figure out the one I want to be for Cammie. And watching the large leaves gracefully sway in the breeze confirms it. This is the one.

Right after everything went down with my father, I came back here because I couldn't wrap my head around what had just happened and how I could go from thinking I was a volcano to a tree and back to a volcano all in the span of mere hours.

That's when I became obsessed with this one tree, the only one in this particular area—unique, beautiful, graceful, and strong. Because if I were stranded here, with no one else to help me or protect me, me against the world, this one tree would be all I'd need.

Pushing up from the reclining position I've been in, I hop off my car, open the door, and pull the bat I used to smash Violet's car from the passenger side before walking over to my tree. As I swing, I glance up to make sure I'm not about to be hit in the head with falling balls of fruit.

The tree's response proves my point, though. Sturdy, it bends but quickly recovers, able to withstand nearly anything. Hurricanes, forces of nature, people. Well, except chain saw wielding or demolition people.

Every time I hit it, it just bounces back into place, until it's eventually still again. Swinging, I hit it harder this time. A coconut careens toward my head, and I jump back to avoid being hit.

When I said I wanted to be Cammie's tree a week ago, I had a hardwood in mind, something like an oak or magnolia tree. They live hundreds of years long. They provide way more shade than this palm tree. There's no way in hell either of them would bend or move if I slammed a metal bat into the trunk.

When I came back here after my father shot himself—as soon as my mother walked out of that house, with both of us hearing the shot ring through the neighborhood and rocking the very foundation we were standing on, knowing we'd just lost another person we loved, even if he was a disappointment—what I realized is, it's better to bend and bounce back. What good is it to have this huge tree that only serves to provide a broad canopy, a filter of false reality, of false security? Especially because in the winter, it loses all the leaves. And you're left with little more than a solid trunk in the shivering cold. They don't provide anything for basic human survival other than the façade of being pretty, majestic, the wise man of the forest.

Putting the bat under my arm, I pet the husk of the coconut in my hands and shake my head. This damn thing just fell from atop a tree onto the hard ground and didn't bust. It's still intact, and I bet I could beat the shit out of it with this bat before even denting it.

One week. Seven days since my father committed suicide, since he admitted to having sex with Heather, since she and her family packed up and moved away leaving our family in the Magnolia Grove headlines every day. One week since my level of normal slipped so deep into uncharted territory, I didn't even know how dark these depths could be.

It's unfathomable. It doesn't feel real. None of this does. I keep waiting to wake up from this nightmare, for it to be that day when I was fighting Violet for her toothbrush, and she never gets sick, Cammie never gets hurt, my father isn't this man I never knew, and I'm not stuck in this perpetual state of shock, disbelief, anger, and despair.

Fathom.

How do I ever fathom this?

The negotiator that helped save my mother used that word when he was speaking to my father. I don't even know if his story was true, or if he just used it to try to build rapport with my dad, to show empathy. He was talking about the loss of a child when he used that word, but to me it's the loss of my sister, my father, the life I thought I had, the realization people don't seem to be who we think they are, and the mourning of all that.

Not even two hundred hours since the axis of my world continued to shift so dramatically it is constantly jolting me.

Forty-eight hours since I realized I'm one of those dipshits that disappoint people, specifically Cammie. That I've probably made her mourn the person she thought I was, how much of a letdown I must be to her.

The day of the visitation and funeral, even though I know it sounds awful, I was actually hopeful. My lips curve up just thinking of how much I was looking forward to it. Only because I knew she'd be there.

How could she not be?

Despite my father sending the company he co-owned with her father, Spencer and Masters Consulting, into a public relations nightmare from the leaked information that Eddie Masters screwed anything with a vagina, client or otherwise, our mothers appear to still be best friends.

Rich Spencer has put on a professional front, but I've had a glimpse of the man behind the calm and composed image he projects. And any hopes I had for redemption for him after learning about the deeds of my father were quickly shattered. He thought he was alone with my mother.

"Georgette, I hope you know we're so sorry for everything you've been through."

"Thanks, Rich," my mother replied.

I was hiding out behind a wall. They were in the very kitchen where my father took his life a few days prior.

"What can I do for you?"

"Stock is plummeting."

"I'm sorry to hear that," she replies.

"We need a new investor."

"Get to the point, Rich."

There was a brief pause. "He created the mess. Don't you think his estate should be the one to bail it out?"

Three fucking days after Mom lost the love of her life, the father of her children—even if he was an asshole to her—Rich Spencer was asking her to save his sinking ship.

But hearing him meant Cammie was probably around, and I couldn't wait to hug her. I didn't care about his threats anymore. I just wanted to explain why I'd said and done what I had, yearned to be in her arms because surely she'd offer me her embrace as a measure of comfort at my loss. But instead, if I walked into a room, she left. It was like she pretended I didn't exist. The same way I'd been treating her. She never came through the receiving line. She didn't say she was sorry. She didn't say any fucking thing. Not one damn word.

Dropping the bat, I toss the coconut up and then catch it. Repeating the gesture, the next time I send it higher in the air. I know what I have to do. I need to talk to her. Over the last couple of days, I've realized something so important—what the coconut has taught me.

I get that she's created an exocarp and mesocarp, this hard husk, to protect all the goodness that's on the inside of her, her endocarp—her heart. Sometimes, it takes being isolated on a deserted island to realize how invaluable the coconut is, to regret taking it for granted for so long.

More than anything, what I need to tell her is that I'm not her tree.

She's mine.