The Apple Tree My Neighbor Cut Down

I asked the nurse to look in on Sharon, kissed my sister’s forehead, told her I loved her and that I would be back as soon as I could, and I got in my car and drove the entire way home without stopping except for gas. Eight hours, alone, with my hands shaking on the wheel the whole time, telling myself it might be a misunderstanding, it might be the power company trimming a line, it might be nothing at all.

It was not nothing.

I turned onto my street a little after midnight and my headlights swept across my own front yard, and for one confused second I truly thought I had turned onto the wrong road, because the whole shape of the property looked different, lower somehow, more open, wrong in a way I couldn’t name yet.

Then I saw it. Where the tree had stood for fifty years there was a stump, cut low and clean, pale wood catching the moonlight like a scar. Wood chips were scattered across the grass. A tarp had been thrown over what I guessed was the trunk, cut into rounds and stacked against my own fence like firewood somebody planned to come back for.

I sat in my driveway with the engine running for I don’t know how long. I did not cry right away. I just stared at that stump like it might explain itself to me if I looked long enough.

The lights were still on next door. I got out of my car, walked straight up their driveway in the clothes I’d been wearing since six that morning, and pounded on the door with the side of my fist.

Chad answered wearing a golf polo at eleven at night, a beer in his hand, like he’d been expecting company all evening and I was simply running a little late to his party.

“Joyce!” he said, like we were old friends. “You’re back early.”

“What did you do to my tree.”

“Your tree?” He said it slow, like I’d made a grammar mistake he found charming. “Come on now. It was hanging over onto our side plenty. Casting shade right where our contractor’s putting the hot tub pad. We had it taken care of. Saved you the trouble, honestly.”

“That tree was not on your property, Chad. It was six feet inside my fence line.”