The Wishing Trees (45 page)

Ian looked down, glanced to Mattie. “Yeah, Roo?”

“Are you crying?”

He shook his head. “No, luv. Just . . . a bit of sunscreen in the old eyes. Stings like the bite of a fire ant.”

“Maybe you should wash it off. In the Red Sea.”

“Will you go with me?”

“Sure.”

Ian picked up their masks and snorkels, took Mattie’s hand, and walked toward the water. It was cooler than he expected, contrasting with the fierce sun and nearby desert. Continuing to hold Mattie’s hand, he waded deeper into the water, small waves tumbling into his calves, then his thighs. He handed Mattie her mask and snorkel, glad that her freckled face still looked young.

She put on her equipment. “Where should we go, Daddy? Do you think they have a Shark Point here?”

“No, luv. I reckon not. But let’s . . . let’s find something beautiful. Something for Holly.”

“And we’ll mail it to her? Maybe something each for Holly and Rupee?”

He adjusted the top of her bikini, trying to cover more of her flesh. “How about giving it to her, Roo? Would you fancy that?”

“Giving it to her? You mean, next year, when we come back?”

“I mean next month. When we return to Hong Kong.”

“What?”

“Do you still want to go back, luv? I could work there, for a few ticks of the old clock, and we could see what happened. We could leave Egypt, go back to the States, say hello to our mates and loved ones, and then buzz off for Hong Kong.”

She took off her mask. “Really? Really, Daddy?”

“If that’s what you want.”

Mattie dropped her mask, jumping up through the water, wrapping her arms around his neck. “That’s what I want. It is. It is.”

“I reckoned as much,” he replied, holding her out of the water, her body so light against his.

“But is it . . . is it what you want?”

“Aye, aye, First Mate. And I think your mum wants us to go back too. I think that’s one of the reasons she sent us on this walkabout.”

Mattie looked around. “Which way is the west, Daddy?”

He pointed, still holding her. “Over there.”

“Can we swim in that direction? I think we’ll find the most beautiful things over there.”

“Let’s swim to the west.”

“And when we swim . . . will you hold my hand? Like you always have?”

“I won’t ever stop holding your hand, Roo.”

“You won’t?”

“No, luv. Not ever.”

“Promise?”

He wrapped his pinkie around hers. “Promise.”

Smiling, Mattie reached down, picking up her mask and snorkel from the sandy bottom. Soon she was swimming, holding her father’s hand, watching green and blue fish, looking for treasures that she would find for Holly and Rupee, and that she would place in a wishing tree, a tree that stood on the west side of the Nile, where spirits rested, where her mother could easily see what she had done.

MUCH LATER, AFTER THE SKY HAD DARKENED and the moon arisen, Ian sat on the balcony of their hotel room. Mattie was asleep inside, and Ian had drawn the curtains and stepped into the night air. He had propped a flashlight on a chair beside him, and it cast a weak light on the notebook he held. As he wrote, he glanced at a large tropical tree that brushed up against the balcony. The tree must have been present long before the hotel. Its thick branches were gnarled and needed trimming. Yet fresh leaves emerged in places, as if the tree’s will to endure was as strong as, or even stronger than, ever.

Ian finished taking notes, set the page aside, and started to write on a fresh piece of paper.

Kate,

I’m no poet, my love, but I’ll tell you this—you always made me want to be one. You made a believer of me in the beauty of words and thoughts. And now, I believe in so many things. In you. In love and goodness and forever. In that we were drawn together for reasons.

I touch our daughter’s face, and I see yours. I hear her laugh, and I listen to you.

You’re right—something can’t be pulled from you if it’s a part of you. And you’re a part of me. And I will always cherish this oneness, just as the sun must cherish its unity with the sky.

I know, my love, that I don’t need to ask your forgiveness for what I’m about to do, for opening my heart. I know that you led me down this path, and why you did so. You took my hand and guided me toward a source of light, a new beginning. Not away from you, but toward you, toward that oneness, that sense beyond self.

I love you so much, Kate. I always have and I always will. You created us, and from us, such wonder has happened. Mattie will be happy. Content. And loved. You saved her. And me. And we’re going to save a child of the streets. A boy who was lost, but soon will be found.

We’ve lived so many lives together, you and I. And we’ll keep living them, not in flesh, but in spirit. And then, one day, I won’t need wishing trees to talk with you. I’ll go where you’ve gone, where beauty seeks refuge, where bliss becomes eternal, and together we’ll watch goodness unfold—like one of Mattie’s drawings, full of so much splendor and hope and love. So much wonder.

Look at what we’ve done, my love. Look and be happy. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Ian

He folded the paper carefully. After making sure that Mattie was still asleep and that the room’s door was locked, he crept to the edge of the balcony. The ground was about twenty feet below, and the beat of his heart quickened as he eyed a nearby branch, which was almost an arm’s length away and as thick as his thigh. Certain that the branch would support him, that the old tree wouldn’t fail him, Ian tucked his letter into his pocket. He climbed over the railing and stood on the edge of the balcony, holding the metal behind him.

After taking several deep breaths and studying the branch, he leapt for it, his arms wrapping around it, his skin pierced and torn in several places, but his mind unyielding. Grunting, he pulled himself up, swinging his leg over the branch, twisting so that he was atop it. Scooting forward, he reached the trunk of the tree and began to climb. He took pleasure in the task, as if he were drawing closer to Kate. And he went up, higher and higher, until the tree swayed beneath him, and distant lights on the Red Sea shined like fireflies.

A breeze arose, causing leaves to move and chatter, the tree to come alive. He watched the stars, the gathering of worlds. He thought of Mattie sleeping below, of how they would explore more peaks and valleys, seas and sketches. His life wasn’t over, he knew, though not long ago he had feared that it was. In so many ways, he was like the tree, whose ancestors might have shaded Moses. The tree had been wounded in places, with stumps where branches had been, with cracks in once-smooth wood. Yet the tree was unquestionably alive, and supported life. Insects crawled about it. A bird’s nest was near. The tree still knew how to sing in the wind.

Ian found a crevice in the trunk, which held old leaves and a fine layer of sand. The sand must have arrived before the hotel was built, when storms carried the desert toward the Red Sea. Careful not to disturb the sand, Ian tucked his note into the crevice. The act of seeing the ancient sand, of leaving Kate a note, felt holy. At no point since her death had Ian felt closer to Kate than he did now. He believed in the wishing tree. He believed that she could see him on it, and that she would read or hear or somehow sense the words that he had written. She had spoken to him from the dead—leading him here, to a place where he could rise anew, where the Nile flowed, millennium after millennium, carrying silt and moisture to soil that brought life to the desert, to a place of memories, of histories, of dynasties that would continue to be discovered and celebrated.

The river still flowed, its waters not yet gone, its stories not yet fully told.

HONG KONG

The Smiles of Strangers

“A BIRD DOES NOT SING BECAUSE IT HAS AN ANSWER. A BIRD SINGS BECAUSE IT HAS A SONG.”

—CHINESE SAYING

A
n old man removed his thick glasses, cleaned them on his shirt, and then settled back on the bench. He had been coming to the park since childhood, and though the city below it had changed, the park hadn’t. The boulders were the same, as were the wide stretch of grass, the laugher of children, the way the sun felt on his skin.

As he had many times over the past year and a half, the old man watched a family of Westerners, their words incomprehensible to him, but their faces familiar and welcome. The family sat on a picnic blanket and savored the day. A girl with light brown hair lay on her belly, drawing in a sketch pad. Another girl, about the same age, laughed with a dark-skinned boy who had only recently begun arriving with them.

The old man didn’t understand the appearance of the boy, who looked so different from the girls and the man and woman, who often held hands. The boy always sat near the girls and played with them as if they were his siblings, even though they did not have the same flesh and blood.

As the sun climbed higher, the old man continued to watch the family, savoring their joy, reminded of his own brothers and sisters.

The father removed a soccer ball from a backpack, and soon he and the woman were chasing the ball, and the children ran and laughed, kicking and falling and giggling and making the old man smile so many times.

Dear Reader,

I want to take a moment to thank you for reading
The Wishing Trees
. Countless wonderful and deserving novels exist, and I’m grateful that you set the time aside to read my book. I hope you enjoyed it.

The Wishing Trees
follows in the footsteps of my third novel,
Dragon House
, and I’d like to update you on the street children that
Dragon House
is helping. The success of that novel, along with direct donations from readers, has allowed us to buy sets of schoolbooks for about eight hundred Vietnamese street children over the past year. I’m so grateful for this outcome and am indebted to readers, librarians, and booksellers for their encouragement and generosity.

I also want some good to come out of
The Wishing Trees
and plan to donate some of the funds generated by my book to support the Arbor Day Foundation. So, if you’ve purchased
The Wishing Trees
, or told a friend about it, know that you’ve helped plant a little tree—a wishing tree, as I like to think.

As always, feel free to contact me with questions or comments. I can be reached through my Web site at
www.johnshors.com
.

Be well.

John