Return to Me

  Ginny plucked a dark-chocolate chunk cookie from the platter and handed it to me. “Try. I added crystallized ginger.” Then, like my personal shopper of desserts, she also selected a lemon bar for me. “Or here. Because when life hands you lemons, you make lemon bars. Honestly! As if lemonade is soul food.”

  “I wish I could cook like you,” I said.

  “It’s just practice.”

  “Um… no. I could practice eight hours every day and never bake like this.”

  “But you don’t want to be a pastry chef.” Preparing for a long girl talk, Ginny plunked down on the hardwood floor and patted the spot beside her. “What did your mom say when you told her you aren’t going to school this year?”

  Before answering, I took a delicate nibble. The sweet heat of the candied ginger enhanced the bittersweet dark chocolate. “Ginny! This is beyond wow! Mom was pretty supportive once she got used to the idea.”

  “And your dad?”

  I shrugged. “Weird, he was the one who said I was basically dropping out and grad schools would look badly on the year.”

  “So… you’re changing your mind?”

  “Not yet. I’ve got some ideas about what I want to do.”

  “Like what?”

  No different from needing Jackson to accept me, I didn’t want to hide myself from Ginny anymore, either. So I said, “I might help my grandmother with her tours.”

  “Her woo-woo tours?” An amused smile danced across Ginny’s lips. “Really?”

  Cookie crumbs littered my lap. I brushed them into my palm. “There might be something to those places she visits. I mean, being on top of the volcano, I definitely felt some energy.”

  “That would be called molten lava.”

  At another time I might have laughed it off, agreed with Ginny that “feeling energy” was as ludicrous as hanging out with space aliens. With the cookie crumbs still cupped in my hand, I studied these culinary inventions and asked her, “How do you know what taste combinations work?”

  Ginny shrugged. “I just know.”

  “That’s how my intuition works. I just know certain things might happen. Might happen, not will.” I lifted my eyes to Ginny, who had crossed her arms. “There’s nothing to be scared of by me knowing things.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe” was a first, stumbling baby step to accepting me, all of me. I’d take that, but I had to finish saying my piece, too. “I don’t need you to believe in my intuition, but I do need you to stop dismissing it in front of me.”

  Ginny got to her feet then, and I thought she’d leave me in a huff, the way she’d always stormed out when I predicted her future. I worried that she’d stay silent for another three months.

  “Where are you going?” I asked her gently.

  “To pull out the pies.”

  “How do you know they’re done?” I asked, knowing that she rarely used the oven timer but relied on some inner baker’s instinct.

  With her back to me, Ginny said, “Okay, I get it. Look, I know you didn’t have anything to do with my dad dying, but what you said was so… connected. So I still don’t want to hear anything that has to do with me, okay?”

  “You have my word,” I said, because she did.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  My hero who listened attentively to my childhood ideas for a treehouse now heard me out again. Peter and I sat across from each other at the long, battered table in his simple but comfortable office in Capitol Hill, a gritty neighborhood in transition in Seattle. Exposed brick walls, floorboards made from recycled gym benches—these materials warmed the space, making it feel authentic and original. What I loved most were the corkboards at each workstation, covered with photographs and paint swatches. I felt at home.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” Peter urged, then leaned forward, hands on top of each other.

  To prepare for this meeting, I had listed all the ideas I had collected for my gap year. More than that, I had even practiced my preamble.

  “After doing some massive soul-searching and brainstorming with my mom and grandma, I know what I’d love to do. I want to create a healing sanctuary of treehouses for people. After what happened to us, we needed a place to retreat and to think clearly. And that’s what Grandpa’s place on the Big Island provided for us.”

  At that, Peter nodded in understanding. “But that’s not big enough for what you have in mind.”

  “There are tons of people who could really benefit from a treehouse retreat,” I said, my voice becoming impassioned the way Mom’s did whenever she discovered an obscure new plant for the garden. I didn’t need my notes any longer. My rehearsals—first with Mom, then with Grandpa over the phone—had prepared me well. Besides, in my gut, I knew Peter wouldn’t scoff. His first inclination wouldn’t be to throw up obstacles, citing finances and insurance and lack of experience.

  As I suspected, Peter simply leaned in, nodding. “I know a couple of people who could use it now.”

  “So for my gap year, I could help my grandmother on her tours to sacred spots for inspiration about what makes a place special. But she wants to wind that part of her business down, so I don’t know how many opportunities there’ll really be,” I said, cupping the heavy handmade teacup Peter had filled with a coconut-infused black tea. “One of her last trips is to Machu Picchu this spring, and possibly Scotland in the summer. What do you think?”

  Peter set his glasses on the table. “Traveling is one of the best ways to broaden your creative palette, and if you’re looking for spaces that heal people’s souls, there’s no better way to find them than traveling. You have to experience those places firsthand, stand in their space, breathe in their air. You can’t do that through the Internet or a book. Actually, I took a gap year myself between getting my undergraduate and graduate degrees. I traveled around Asia, sketching.”

  “Sketching what?” I asked, entranced, and leaned closer toward him across the table.

  “Like”—he frowned, remembering—“the layers of paint and paper on these ancient walls in China, thousands of years old. And the gorgeous carvings on temple columns in Thailand. And the amazing latticework in Japan. Believe it or not, I still flip through those journals for inspiration. So if you can travel, even in the U.S., that’s always a good thing.”

  The idea of traveling right here in the States sparked a thought. “Grandma said she wanted to start a series of spirituality tours in Santa Fe. Or Sedona. Or right here.”

  “Oh, sure. There are a bunch of houses in town, Mount Baker, Leschi, and out in Port Townsend and Port Gamble that are haunted. A couple of restaurants in Belltown and Pioneer Square, too. And there’s a guy, a tribal elder, who’s a ghost whisperer and does exorcism for real estate agents. The newspaper did an article about him a couple of years ago.”

  “That’s what Grandma was saying!”

  Peter pulled out his iPhone, not to check his messages but to jot a few notes from our conversation. “Let me send you a list of those places to scout out. And the guy’s name. But there are definitely things you could do that are more directly related to architecture, if you wanted. You know, one of my buddies is one of the world’s best treehouse builders. Pete did a project for two of my clients.”

  “Pete? As in Pete Nelson? You know him?” I squealed and set my coffee on the gnarled table so hard, it sloshed. Pete is the I. M. Pei of treehouses, a superstar who builds custom ones for clients around the world. “You really know him?”

  “Yeah.” Peter laughed. “He lives in Issaquah. I can introduce you to him.”

  “I might freak him out. I’m, like, his biggest fangirl!” I said. Then, more cautiously, “Do you think he might take on an intern?”

  “You’ll never know unless you ask.” Peter sipped his tiny cup of tea. “One other thing that you could do to prepare yourself is to work on job sites. You know, Cameron paid for college by working for a painting contractor every summer. It’s a hard job, super messy, but it pays well.”
r />   “I like painting. I can paint!”

  “And the best thing would be, you’d get to know how job sites are run. And how to work with a bunch of guys. That’s good, practical knowledge for an architect. Are you afraid of heights?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’d have to be okay getting on stilts.”

  “Stilts?”

  “To reach high places. And those industrial-size paint cans are pretty heavy.”

  I thought about Mom, not much older than I was now, striding into boardrooms with men decades older than herself. She had demoed products, negotiated deals, answered tough questions, whether she was nervous or not. So I swallowed my fear and answered, “I can do it.”

  “Cool, then, I can give Jerry a call for you,” Peter offered. He drummed his fingers on the table. “And then there’s always interning with an architect so you know how to run the back office. I could use someone who can do computer work and help write grant proposals.”

  “What kinds of grants?”

  Peter blew out his breath. “Well, we just finished a proposal for an expo in 2015. Living Oceans, so that visitors can learn more about living symbiotically with the sea. And then there was the City 2045 Building Challenge, where architects and city planners were asked to imagine what a city might look like in the future.”

  “That’s so cool,” I said, scooting to the edge of my seat. “I would love to work on projects like that! What do you get if you win?”

  “Grant money. A lot of architecture work is speculative.”

  I sat back in my chair, literally rendered speechless by this bounty of opportunities, each sparkling appealingly. How could one conversation open up my life so powerfully?

  “There’s so much you could do in a year off,” Peter said gently, as though he sensed how overwhelmed I felt. “You don’t have to know exactly what you’re going to do this very second. Sometimes you can just let life unfold.”

  “Who knew?” I asked, awed.

  “And the best part is that you’re only beginning. The more people you talk with, the more opportunities you’ll have. And the more doors will open to that sanctuary of yours. You’ll see.”

  “But how do I choose? They all sound so amazing.”

  Peter said, “You’ll just know.”

  There it was again, intuition. I cocked my head to the side. “Come on, really? Leave my whole life up to my gut?”

  “The entire creative process—whether you’re talking art or writing or scientific research—is based on gut instinct working in tandem with know-how. It’s no different from knowing when a space works.” Peter shrugged like that was entirely normal, perfectly reasonable, one hundred percent fact. Then his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. I could see the idea coalescing in his mind, gaining traction. “I think you should talk with my friend Sybille. She’s the most senior woman in construction in the Northwest. I have a feeling you could learn a lot from her.”

  I had an image of myself, toes at the edge of a diving platform, the pool far, far below. Even though I trembled, in my mind, my arms spread wide and I made up my mind to jump.

  “I have a good feeling about this, too.” Warmth and confidence stood alongside my nervousness, sistering me. I told Peter with heartfelt gratitude, “Thank you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Two short days later—count them, two—I found myself sitting in a corner office on the thirty-fifth floor of a downtown skyscraper, overlooking Elliott Bay. Such was Peter’s power to unlock the pearly-white doors of what my research had found to be the premier developer in the Northwest.

  While the view was undeniably picturesque, with white ferries trolling the sparkling waters, what caught my eye were all the building materials layered like an archaeological site around me. Piles of seafoam-green glass tiles leaned against tablets of granite and slate. Beside the door, dusty gray-blue stones the size of bricks were roped together with rough jute.

  Before I saw Sybille, I heard her footfalls, a purposeful stride as though she had no time to cover all the ground she wanted. Then her question: “Is Reb here?” Suddenly, every one of my insecurities came crashing over me. What was I thinking, borrowing Ginny’s frilly black skirt and Shana’s crisp white shirt, since all my interview-appropriate clothes were back in New Jersey? I rubbed my sweaty palms frantically down my thighs. Did I look matronly with Mom’s red scarf tied around my neck? And what if Sybille was anything like Sam Stone?

  As soon as she burst into her office, the warmth of her smile dispelled some of my anxiety. “Excellent, you’re on time,” she said, and stuck her work-roughened hand out for a firm handshake. “Peter has very good things to say about you.”

  Though she was dressed nondescriptly in an oversize black fleece jacket over high-waisted mom jeans, there was nothing plain about Sybille’s startling green eyes, which peered keenly at me from under her graying bangs. Whatever answer she expected, my nod to polite conversation was decidedly—and almost rudely—short. I couldn’t help but blurt, “What’s the story behind those?” as I gestured at the stones on the floor.

  “Now, that’s the kind of question I like,” Sybille said, motioning me to kneel beside her. She placed a sturdy hand on the stones. “These were recovered from a village in China. Remember the Three Gorges Dam? How all those villages in China were flooded to build it? Well, there’s a guy in town who excavated these footstones before they were lost underwater.”

  “I love that,” I said, and stroked the stones, worn smooth through thousands of years of people treading over them. Where I once might have been content with that nibble of information, I decided to channel my mom and ask for more: “There’s so much history here. What are you using them for?”

  “A foundation that supports environmental causes is building a new campus here in Seattle. We’re putting these in the front courtyard.”

  “That’s the perfect place. Are they going anywhere else?”

  “Yeah!” Her eyes glittered with a fervor I understood. “My favorite installation is going to be the walkway to one of the meeting rooms on the campus. We’re siting it in this ancient oak tree.”

  “A treehouse? You’re making them a treehouse meeting room?” In my excitement, my voice went cartoon-squeaky. Instead of wallowing in embarrassment, I cleared my throat and took a deep, calming breath. Sybille simply stood near the door, expectantly. Mom would never have allowed a conversation to falter in this silence, nor would Grandma have allowed an opportunity to wither at this critical point in the conversation. Instead, they both would have steered the discussion in a new direction to deepen it, spark new life. And I had prepared for exactly this opening, practicing with Mom all the different ways I could integrate my passion into the interview. “I love treehouses! They’re why I want to build a treehouse sanctuary one day for people who need a special place to heal. What do you think?”

  “A treehouse sanctuary. Now, that’s interesting,” Sybille said, beckoning me to the couch at the opposite end of her office. She sat beside me. “Tell me more.”

  So I sketched my vision: a plot of land sited in quiet woods, location to be determined, peacefulness required, beauty essential. The sanctuary would be filled with treehouses, each unique, ideally ten, but no more than fifteen. Here, people could retreat and rejuvenate, the same way my family had found solace at my grandfather’s place on the Big Island. Then I bridged the conversation back to Sybille: “Have you built a lot of treehouses?”

  “We’ve worked with a specialist before and are bringing him back in for this project.”

  “Pete Nelson?”

  Sybille cocked her head, eyebrows lifted as though she was impressed. When she nodded, I practically fell over. There was no way I could contain or secret away my enthusiasm. “I love Pete Nelson’s work! Especially his Trillium treehouse—it’s like a double-decker bus in the forest! What does the one you’re building look like? Do you have plans? Can I see?”

  When Sybille stood, laughing, I followed her
to her mammoth desk before the wall of windows. I knew it would seem odd, but I had to touch the desk, hewn from a single, massive plank of wood, its edges left raw and natural.

  No sooner did Sybille take her seat than she asked, as though proctoring a test, “What do you like about this piece?”

  I flushed, surprised I wasn’t all that abashed at being caught caressing the wood. Something told me that Sybille herself had done the same when she first met her desk. “I love that it looks real. Like you went to the forest and took a slice out of a fallen tree. Elm, right?”

  Nodding, Sybille considered me for a long moment, then swiveled to grab a file from her drawers. As she set the file on the whorled desk, she said, “So, Peter tells me you have questions for your year off from school.”

  After running through the list of options I’d come up with for my gap year, some with Peter, others with my family, the rest by myself, I admitted my fear: “What if I make a mistake and choose the wrong thing to do?”

  “Personally, I’ve found that even the experiences where you wonder what the hell you’re doing eventually help. Actually, especially those hurt-like-hell experiences. You know, I started here as a secretary, but I decided to track down every single doorknob, every single door, every single window used in fifteen job sites. I saved the company a quarter million dollars, even though people thought I should have focused on serving them better coffee.”

  “That would be challenging.”

  “Do a job, and do it better than anyone expects: That’s my motto. So why choose?” Sybille gestured broadly, as though taking stock of her own life. “Do you have to choose?”

  I frowned, blown away by this concept. Her question, simple as it was, opened a new, untraveled path I had never considered. Why choose? Wasn’t that what Grandpa had been saying all along—and look at the beautiful mosaic of a life he was crafting. Bits and pieces of experiences spanning construction to art had gone into creating his inn.