Page 35 of The Strawberry Field
To him. Or to me.
He doesn’t need to carry guilt about this.
He’s already carried more than his share.
Chapter Thirteen
Jake
I DREAM ABOUT Sawyer that night.
She’s at the top of an enormous outcrop of rock that looks like the Cliffs, the place we’d gone to dive from that summer we met, except this rock is much larger. It’s like a mountain, and with Sawyer standing at the top, she looks miles away, so far up in the sky that I can barely see her from my spot at the base.
There’s no water below, only dry ground. I call her name again and again, shouting until my throat burns, but she doesn’t hear me. She’s looking out into the distance, stepping closer to the edge. My heart slams against my ribs, dread rising fast and cold. I know what she’s about to do. I yell her name one last time, and then I’m awake, bolting upright, sweat streaming down my face.
I sit for a moment, trying to get my bearings, and then I realize that it’s not sweat, but tears. I sit there in the dark for a couple of minutes, trying to figure out what the dream meant and why I would be dreaming such a thing. I don’t let myself think about what would have happened if I hadn’t woken up.
Have I picked up on something in Sawyer that my subconscious is trying to warn me about? It seems preposterous, and yet I can’t deny that something about this nags at me in a way I can’t turn away from. I would like to call it ridiculous and chalk it up to my current state of mind, the difficulty of these past couple of months, living in quarantine and having terror stoked with every news report, but somehow I know this isn’t it. I have a gut feeling that something is wrong, and I can’t give myself anything else to regret in this life.
I glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand next to the bed. It’s just after five a.m. I know there’s no chance I’m going back to sleep now. I get up and head for the bathroom. Hattie whines, questioning why I’m up this early. “You go back to sleep, girl,” I say, but when I head downstairs to put on some coffee, she’s right at my heels.
I let her out in the yard, and after I pour my cup of coffee, I walk outside barefoot to join her. We head down to the dock and watch the sun rise, and as it ascends the horizon, a pink ball in the sky, I make my decision.
If I’m wrong, Sawyer will question my sanity and forbid me from setting foot on her property again. So I come up with a way to get in front of her without making it obvious.
I gather a number of tools from my garage and load them into the back of the truck. I pull into Sawyer’s driveway at just past eight. Lights are on in the house, so I’m assuming she’s awake.
I get out, Hattie bounding down beside me and trotting off to explore the yard. I walk to the front door, knock and wait with my heart pounding, aware that there’s every likelihood she’ll turn down my offer and send me on my way.
The door opens, and Sawyer is standing there, holding a cup of coffee, surprise on her face.
“Good morning,” I say.
“Good morning?” she says, a question mark at the end.
I wave a hand at my truck. “I had some extra time on my hands. I was wondering if you might want me to trim up some of the tree limbs in your yard. I noticed some of them are growing up against the house.”
“Oh,” she says, looking at the trees as if she’s seeing them for the first time. “Yeah, I think I have that on my To-Do list. And you don’t need to do that really. It’s a lot of work.”
“I don’t mind,” I say. “Like I said, I’ve got a few extra hours this morning, and it’d be nice just to be outside doing something productive.”
“Jake,” she says, and I can hear the reluctance in the utterance of my name, “I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”
“Trimming the trees?” I say, deliberately obtuse.
“No,” she says, looking at me poignantly. “You being here.”
“Sawyer, I’m not looking for anything other than to help out a friend. That’s it. I get it. You’ve got a life somewhere else.”
“I did have a life,” she says, dropping her gaze. It seems like I should let her continue, but something tells me it’s better to steer the conversation elsewhere.
“I’ve got the tools and a ladder in the back of my truck. You don’t even need to be out here. I can just get started.”
“I can’t let you do it by yourself,” she says. “I’m perfectly capable of piling up limbs. Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Actually, that sounds good.”
“Come on, then,” she says.
