Under the Wishing Tree (Oakwood Hollow #1)

8. Past

8

Past

Eden

I stood frozen on the platform as the train hissed and groaned, preparing to pull away. Through the window, Graham’s eyes locked with mine. I tried to be strong, to leave him with a picture of someone worth returning to, but in reality, all he could probably see was a girl with a wet, crumpled face.

The breath caught in my throat when the train jerked forward. Graham flashed me one last smile before the train pulled away, the gap between us widening with every second that passed. I didn’t blink, as if keeping my eyes on him would somehow tether him here, but the train kept moving, and all too soon, he was gone from sight.

I stood there long after the train had disappeared, my arms wrapped around myself.

“Be safe,” I whispered into the breeze, hoping the wind would carry it to him.

I pushed open the door to my house, the familiar creak of the hinges greeting me as I stepped inside. The usual warmth of my home felt strangely absent now, the space too quiet, too still without Graham’s presence.

I kicked my boots off at the door and headed upstairs, my body moving on autopilot as my mind replayed the day over and over. I might have thought it had all been a dream except my lips still tingled from his kiss, and my body still felt the solid weight of him.

Even though it was barely past seven, I changed into my sleep clothes and got ready for bed. But once I made it into my room, all my weary body could manage was to stumble and fall face first into my bed. I curled to my side and gathered my knees to my chest, trying to breathe though the intense ache in my chest.

Then I noticed it—an acorn sitting on my nightstand. I reached out for it, turning it over in my hand with a wry smile.

Graham’s pain-in-the-butt nut.

Despite myself, I laughed. I clutched it in my hand and pressed it to my chest, a bittersweet mix of sadness and hope coursing through me. Graham was gone, but this—this was a piece of him I could hold onto.

The first letter came only a few days after Graham’s departure. I was in line at the bakery when Albion, the mailman, passed by and saw me through the window.

“Eden, I have something for you,” he said, digging into his mailbag.

“You didn’t have to come all the way here,” I said gently, a little embarrassed at the attention we were garnering. After all, my house was on his route to the town square.

“I figured you might want this right away,” he said and handed me a white envelope with the name Graham Moore written on the top left corner.

I thanked him and hurried home, not having the patience to even go inside. I sat on the porch swing and ripped open the envelope, reading and then rereading the letter inside with a giddy smile on my face.

Graham’s letters quickly became a town preoccupation. Every day, people cornered poor Alby, asking him if there were any letters for me before I even checked myself. He’d chuckle and shake his head, muttering something like, “I’m no love messenger, folks. I deliver everyone’s mail, not just Eden’s.”

But that didn’t stop anyone from asking Alby, or me. At the cafe, Mabel would slyly ask if I had any “new news” with that knowing smile of hers. Even Mrs. Callahan from the bakery, who claimed never to care much for gossip, would occasionally slip me an extra pastry “for good luck,” as she called it.

And when my path would cross with Alby, he would give me a sly grin. “Got the whole town waiting on your guy’s words more than the newspaper,” he’d say with a knowing look. “You’d think he was writing them love letters, too.“

Graham’s letters were always written in the same steady way, like nothing could rattle him, even when the world around him was in chaos.

Eden , one of his letters began. You wouldn’t believe how quiet the nights can be here. Sometimes, when the stars are out, I think of you. It’s strange, really. You’d expect a war zone to be noisy all the time, but it’s the silences that get to you the most.

He wrote about the little pockets of calm between the firefights and the drills. He told me about the desert heat, the dust that clung to everything, the sound of helicopters overhead. Sometimes, he’d mention the local children who’d wave at the soldiers as they passed, their lives somehow going on amidst the conflict. His words were so vivid, sometimes it felt like I was there with him.

There’s this dog that’s been hanging around the base , he wrote in another letter. He’s scrappy and missing an ear, but he’s got spirit. We’ve started feeding him scraps. He reminds me of the strays back home. I guess, in a way, he kind of reminds me of myself.

He had a way of finding the small, human moments in all the madness. He never wrote much about the fighting—only brief moments of it, like it was just part of the job. Instead, he focused on the men in his unit, how they’d pass the time playing cards or talking about what they’d do when they got back home.

Then in mid-September, I received a letter and read it quickly, breathlessly, not realizing it would be the last.

Eden,

Things are heating up around here so if you don’t hear from me for a while, it’s because we’re on communications blackout. It’s nothing to worry about. It usually happens at least once during a deployment. I’ll get in touch as soon as I can.

Only a few more weeks until I return! I’m counting down the days.

Love,

Graham

A week passed with no word from him, then two, then three, each day stretching longer than the one before. I pushed myself to remain positive, reassuring myself that he was likely occupied with the final phase of the deployment. Or maybe was planning to surprise me and arrive at Oakwood Hollow unannounced. But deep in my gut, a seed of worry had taken root, and with each passing day without word, the fear started to grow.

Then one day, as I sat in my knitting room, drinking coffee and working on a sweater, my phone rang.

“Eden,” Maggie said as soon as I picked up, her voice panicked and shaky. “You need to turn on the news. Right now.”

I broke out into a cold sweat, my heart thumping painfully in my chest as I picked up the remote control and turned on to the local news channel.

The TV flickered to life, and the news anchor’s solemn face filled the screen. A breaking news banner scrolled across the bottom: “Attack on military base. Multiple casualties reported.”

“Casualties?” My hand drifted up to my mouth as the newscaster began listing details: it had come without warning; the deadliest attack on a military base in a decade. Several soldiers were confirmed dead, but no names had been released yet.

The room seemed to close in around me, the walls pressing closer as the panic clawed its way to my chest.

“Eden, are you there?” Maggie’s voice came through the phone, but it sounded distant, like she was speaking through a long, dark tunnel.

“I’m here,” I choked out, my throat tight, eyes glued to the TV screen, praying that somehow I’d see Graham alive and well. But there was nothing.

He can’t be gone , I told myself over and over.

He’d made an earnest wish at that stupid tree, hadn’t he? The tree wouldn’t have let this happen, not after everything.

Anger surged through me as I shot to my feet and headed for the door. I stumbled down the stairs, hurriedly shoved my feet into boots, and stormed outside. My feet carried me forward, and I sprinted down the street, past the town square, and onto the narrow lane leading to the field. I didn’t slow down, not even as the tree came into view.

My lungs burned as I slowed to a stop in front of that tree, breath coming out in shallow, rapid bursts, my fists clenched at my sides.

“You were supposed to protect him!” I shouted, my voice cracking under the weight of my grief. “He came here and sat in that stupid hole and he made a wish!”

I swung a fist, my knuckles slamming into the rough bark. The pain was immediate, sharp and searing, as blood bloomed over my knuckles. But even that didn’t compare to the pain gripping my heart.

I dropped to my knees, tears blurring my vision as they fell. The tree stood above me, indifferent to my suffering. “He didn’t want to die. He asked you to save him, and you let him die.”

I ground my fists into the fallen leaves covering the ground, the fury and misery crashing over me in endless waves. “Just like you ignored my dad.” My voice broke, the last of my strength leaving until all I could do was wrap my arms around myself and crumple over. My father had wholeheartedly believed in the tree’s magic. It was why he’d brought me to Oakwood Hollow after my mother’s death, why we had come directly to the tree and made identical wishes to bring her back.

Even after he was diagnosed with cancer, he’d still believed. He’d made me bring him here, and we’d once again made identical wishes.

“Promise me something, anak,” he’d said to me that day under the tree’s green canopy. “Promise me you’ll never stop believing.”

And I had kept that promise, right up until the moment he took his last breath, and every hope and prayer I’d pinned on that tree vanished completely.

That was the day the rose-colored haze that I’d viewed the entire town through dissipated, leaving behind the stark truth: there was nothing extraordinary about this town, and the Wishing Tree had no power to grant wishes.

It was, in the end, just a tree.