Chapter 46 The Sugar Maple Tree in My Memory
The sleek Bentley glided away from the sprawling cemetery, merging onto the interstate heading toward the city center.
Chloe rolled down the tinted window, propping her chin on her elbow. The freezing wind whipped at her hair as she stared blankly at the blur of the city.
The landscape was ruthlessly different. Towering glass monoliths had swallowed the suburban lakes and empty fields she remembered. Dense, aggressive traffic choked the lanes, and sleek electric scooters zipped dangerously close to the sidewalks where rusty bicycles used to lean.
No matter how hard she tried to superimpose her memories over the modern concrete, it felt entirely alien. A terrifying, floating sensation of not belonging washed over her.
Whenever that panic spiked in her chest, she would shift her gaze to Nathan’s sharp profile in the driver’s seat, anchoring herself to the only familiar thing left in the universe, before looking back out the glass.
"What are you hungry for tonight?" Nathan asked, his voice a low, grounding rumble over the engine.
"Hmmm..." Chloe chewed her lip. "I would kill for the mac and cheese and fried chicken cutlets from that beat-up food truck that used to park down the street from my house. They served massive portions. I wonder if it’s still there. Let’s go look."
Nathan’s hands tightened slightly on the leather steering wheel. He knew the food truck was a ghost. He knew that entire zip code had been aggressively redeveloped years ago. But hearing the desperate hope in her voice, he didn't have the heart to crush it. He simply flicked the blinker and changed lanes.
"We'll go look," he murmured.
Over an hour later, the Bentley pulled over on the shoulder of a wide, four-lane suburban boulevard.
Nathan killed the engine and stepped out into the biting wind. Chloe followed.
She looked up, her breath completely catching in her throat.
Where her childhood home had once stood, there was now a sterile, monotonous row of luxury townhouses. Perfectly manicured, identical hedges lined a freshly paved, soulless sidewalk.
Chloe stood frozen on the concrete. She slowly turned in a full circle, her eyes frantically scanning for a single, surviving landmark.
There was absolutely nothing.
"Is this... is this really where my house was?" she whispered, the wind snatching the words from her mouth.
Nathan stepped up right behind her, his massive frame shielding her from the street. He pointed toward the center of the identical facades. "Your original lot was right there. This entire block was bought out and leveled six years ago."
Chloe gripped the edge of a low, manicured hedge. She stared at the modern brick for a long, agonizing minute. "There's not a single trace of us left."
Her home had been a classic, sprawling American ranch. Her parents had saved for years to buy the quarter-acre lot.
She remembered the backyard perfectly. Her father had built a raised vegetable garden with his own calloused hands, planting tomatoes, zucchini, and wild mint.
Every evening, her mother would lean out the open kitchen window, the smell of garlic and olive oil wafting into the yard. "Honey, go pick some fresh basil for me!"
And a teenage Chloe would clatter down the wooden porch steps in her slippers, tearing off fragrant green leaves to bring inside. She remembered sitting on that same porch in the mornings, eating cereal, hunting for the reddest, ripest strawberry in the dirt to eat right off the vine.
And then there was the tree. In the southeast corner of the yard stood a massive, ancient sugar maple. Her grandfather had planted it when Alvin was just a boy.
It was decades old, its thick canopy a brilliant, violently burning red every autumn. The crisp, papery rustle of its leaves in the wind had been the soundtrack to her entire childhood.
Years ago, a developer had offered Alvin ten thousand dollars just to cut it down. Alvin had practically chased the man off the lawn. "This tree is our family's foundation," he had said fiercely. "As long as we are alive, this tree stays."
Chloe had sworn to herself back then that she would grow old under that exact same tree.
"What happened to our maple tree?" Chloe turned to Nathan, a sudden, desperate panic in her eyes. "Did they chop it down for these stupid townhouses?"
"No," Nathan said softly, catching her gaze. "I paid to have it legally transplanted to the city park. And I packed up every single piece of your family's furniture and stored it safely in our old house."
Chloe stared at him, stunned.
"As for the land," Nathan continued, his voice perfectly level. "When the developers forced the buyout, I took your family's property compensation and invested it into two luxury apartments in Chicago for Mason. The property values have skyrocketed since."
"Wow." Chloe let out a wet, incredulous laugh, her heart swelling with an overwhelming, suffocating affection for this ruthless, brilliant man. "You really don't miss a single detail, do you? Even if Mason turns out to be totally average and hates studying, those properties mean he’ll never have to struggle."
Nathan let out a low chuckle. "Mason is brilliant. He's at the top of his class. You don't need to worry about him."
"Well, obviously! You practically beat the calculus into me, so tutoring Mason must be a breeze." Chloe smiled, reaching out to firmly pat his broad shoulder. She took one last look at the sterile townhouses. "Come on. There's nothing for me here anymore. Let's go find real food."
"Alright. Let's go," Nathan murmured.
As the engine purred to life, Chloe glanced back at the street. The air, the plants, the concrete—it was an entirely different world. The absolute erasure of her history left a hollow, ringing ache in her chest.
She let out a heavy, shaky sigh.
Nathan’s eyes instantly cut to her. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Chloe murmured, dropping her head back against the leather seat and looking at his impossibly handsome face. "I'm just so glad you're still here, Nathan. You are literally the only thing in my life that hasn't changed."
Her voice dropped to a fragile, devoted whisper. "If you had changed... I truly don't know how I would survive this."
Nathan’s hands froze on the steering wheel. His gaze dropped to the dashboard. He didn't say a word.
I haven't changed?
A dark, suffocating wave of self-loathing crashed over him. He didn't know how to tell her that he had changed more than the goddamn skyline. He was no longer the flawless, invincible boy she had worshipped.
He was old. His mind was rigid, his famous charm had rotted into bitter cynicism, and his body was deeply, irreparably broken by neurological disease.
He felt like an obsolete, decaying house on the verge of demolition. How could any vibrant, twenty-two-year-old woman possibly want to be tethered to a dying man?
She only thought he hadn't changed because he was desperately, meticulously hiding the rot from her.
Over the next few days, Nathan drove Chloe through the winding streets of Minnesota, eventually pulling up to the sprawling municipal park.
The massive sugar maple stood quietly near a man-made pond. Because it was early spring, the leaves hadn't turned their signature fiery red yet. It looked entirely ordinary. Chloe stared at it skeptically, not recognizing it at all.
"Are you absolutely sure this is the one from my backyard?" she asked for the third time.
"Yes, Chloe. I oversaw the excavation and transplanted it myself," Nathan replied, a fond, exasperated smile touching his lips.
Chloe stepped over the low white picket fence, walking right up to the massive trunk. She ran her bare hands over the rough, freezing bark, searching.
Suddenly, about three feet off the ground, her fingers caught on a small, deliberate scar in the wood.
She gasped, a brilliant, blinding smile breaking across her face. "It really is our tree! Nathan, look! It's the mark I carved with my pocketknife!"
As a kid, Chloe had been an absolute menace. Whenever Carol punished her by making her stand in the corner of the yard, a bored Chloe would pull out her little pocketknife and aggressively carve into the maple's trunk. Over the years, she had dug out a deep, permanent groove.
Nathan stepped up behind her, his chest brushing her back as he looked down at the scarred wood. "I know. You showed it to me on our first winter break. You told me Alvin was so furious he threatened to ground you for a month if you killed the tree."
"My dad was full of shit," Chloe laughed softly, though tears immediately pricked her eyes. "He was bluffing. He never laid a hand on me. Even when I bombed my chemistry finals, he just sat me down for a 'serious talk.' The absolute worst punishment I ever got was losing TV privileges for a week."
Chloe stared at the scarred maple tree. For a brief, magical second, the noise of the city faded, and she was standing right back in her childhood yard, safe, untouchable, and entirely loved.
And the man standing behind her had moved heaven and earth to make sure that piece of her history never died.