Willa’s Grove

Copyright © 2020 by Laura Munson

E-book published in 2020 by Blackstone Publishing

Cover design by Alenka Vdovič Linaschke

All rights reserved. This book or any portion

thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner

whatsoever without the express written permission

of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations

in a book review.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental

and not intended by the author.

Printed in the United States of America

Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-982605-26-1

Library e-book ISBN 978-1-982605-25-4

Fiction / Women

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

CIP data for this book is available

from the Library of Congress

Blackstone Publishing

31 Mistletoe Rd.

Ashland, OR 97520

www.BlackstonePublishing.com

I dedicate this book to all of the brave people who have come on my Haven Writing Programs, found their essential voices in intimate community, and set them free. You inspired me to write this book so that people far and wide can see what happens when we gather in honor of self-expression, with kindness, honesty, and support … especially in the woods of Montana.

I also dedicate this book to my children, for making room for me to write and to create this community, alongside my motherhood. I hope that you can find deep passion in your work, wherever your paths lead you! I believe in you with all my heart.

We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

—Joseph Campbell

Nearby is the country they call life.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

The Women

On a typical day in their typical lives, three women went to their mailboxes and found—amid junk mail and bills and shiny flyers for unshiny things—an invitation, sealed with a bold W pressed into sage-green wax.

They had been waiting for this invitation. They longed for it as much as they feared it. Because to break this seal was to release a behemoth of a question—a question so impossible that they had almost stopped asking it.

Each hesitated, looked around, and in respective order, thought, Sweet Jesus, What the hell, Here goes nothing, and slid her finger under the seal, revealing a thick handmade note card, pressed with silvery leaves.

Words winked up at them. Words that might, if given the chance, change everything.

They swallowed hard and pulled out the card. Inside, nestled with a wild bird feather, were the following words:

Each woman held the invitation to her heart, drew in a deep breath before letting out an exhausted sigh that echoed from Connecticut to Wisconsin to California and back to Montana, and went inside to call a dear friend.

The Invitation

Willa walked into the Mercantile, her plaid flannel pajama bottoms tucked into her mud boots, her duct-taped parka zipped up to her chin. It was a cold late-April morning and it had taken her all week to get the courage to take the steps she now took. Past Earl and Wink, the farrier brothers getting their coffee before rounds, past Tally Hansen setting out her Morning Buns on parchment paper atop the cracked glass counter, past Syd the Dog Man and his daily, I can’t resist, growling about his type 2 diabetes, and ending with Marilyn at the post office counter, admiring the latest stamps just in.

Morning, Marilyn. I need some stamps, please, said Willa, her hands firmly in her pockets.

Marilyn eyed Willa like this was a test. US Flag, Endangered Species, or Wild and Scenic Rivers?

Wild and Scenic Rivers, of course, said Willa, adding, "I hear the Upper Missouri is one of them. And the Flathead too. Read it in the Great Falls Tribune." This was a test she longed to pass. These days, she didn’t have it in her to be any more misunderstood than she already was.

Marilyn glared over her reading glasses and pushed a pane of stamps forward.

Willa produced three envelopes of the handmade stationery she’d been saving, pressed with slivers of sage leaves from her garden, added a river stamp to each, and put her lips to the wax seal, sending them off with a kiss. I hope I chose the right words, she thought as she slid them into the slot marked

not local

.

not local

was used most often,

local

only seldomly, word of mouth and the Community Bulletin Board being what they were in Willa, Montana. Willa, Montana, with its very own zip code. Population: thirty-five. Well, thirty-three now that her sons were at college. Thirty-two since Jack’s heart attack last September. And soon to be thirty-one.

That’ll be six dollars and sixty cents, said Marilyn, glancing over Willa’s shoulder. Hey, Earl.

Hey, Marilyn.

Willa recognized the familiar leathery voice, but no Hey, Willa followed. There hadn’t been any Hey, Willas lately. There had been times in her life when she’d wished she was invisible. But as a forty-six-year-old widow in the rural Montana town she loved madly and deeply, and perhaps unreasonably, this wasn’t one of them.

She gambled a smile at Earl, whom she’d never known not to be up for at least a morning headline or a carnal joke. He looked past her at Marilyn. Willa could feel Marilyn’s scowl between her shoulder blades, as if she was branding

not local

into her skin. She put a ten on the counter and Marilyn pushed her change toward her like chess pieces.

Willa took the change and her stamps, pausing, waiting for some sort of peace offering, but none came. So she offered her own version and dropped the money into the spare-a-dime jar, and looked at Tally, who stared into her pastry display. Even Tally. Willa lingered, looking at her, trying to find words, but none came.

Then she went to the door she’d passed through a million times with a million Hey, Willas and stopped short, the sting of it too much. She turned and looked at each of them. Really looked, even if they wouldn’t look at her.

We never dreamed of leaving, you know. She fought back tears. It’s my home too. She didn’t say, I have no other choice. Because Montanans found choices where most people couldn’t fathom them. And stood by them.

The hard fact, as far as this beautiful adopted oddball family of hers knew—this pack which for decades had lived and breathed and grieved as an undeniable unified western front—as far as their Montana-ness could fathom: Willa Silvester was choosing to leave them for no good reason. Except for perhaps grief. And grief wasn’t enough of a reason. She could barely admit the real reason, even to herself.

So, no. No one met her eye to eye, or even eye to boot.

Willa sighed. Well, if you see some strangers here before too long, they’re my friends.

Still nothing. Not even the cock of a head. That was the nail in the casket. Willa, Montana, loved its visitors.

Then Willa did what she’d been dreading for weeks: She pulled a cardboard sign out from under her parka. She found a lone tack on the Community Bulletin Board—full of its usual lost dogs and give-away puppies and fifth wheels for barter for chainsaws and snow tires and all the important currency of a town of thirty-five—and pushed it through the poster and into the old dry cork.

town for auction

willa, montana (1 square mile)

the homestead:

(house and inn, barn and corral, garden,

orchard, bee boxes, chicken coop)

the mercantile:

(post office, store, bakery, saloon,

gas pump, pay phone)

may 19, 3:00 p.m. in the mercantile parking lot

***locals only: goodbye party to follow

(up at willa’s)

There it was in writing on the Mercantile Community Bulletin Board, where everything she’d wanted to communicate with the town over the years had been attached by a tack into this exact cork—her twin boys’ birth announcement, the annual Harvest Cider Party in the orchard, summer movie nights at the barn, the Fourth of July parade and fireworks down Main Street (the only street), town meetings at the Merc, new batches of microbrew and honey, forest-fire alerts, hand-me-downs, the Free Library, the Christmas Swap, Hunter Safety classes, Meals on Wheels (and hooves) for the ill, the old, the lonely. And there had been thank-you notes for any number of services offered in kind to the town by its denizens: knife sharpening, lawn mowing, hay hauling, fence mending, gun repair. And then her most recent posts: her boys’ college announcements, Jack’s memorial service, their horses and mules to give away.

In a matter of weeks, this twenty-year chapter of her life would be over. And she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do next. The only thing she was sure of was that she was leaving. And that her heart had splintered into too many pieces to count, never mind put back together. So now what? It was anybody’s guess.

Willa couldn’t bear to look at any of them then. Instead, she closed the old, time-tested door behind her and walked past the gas pump, wondering if it would go dry now. Whether the phone booth would get disconnected. The

eci

cooler left empty. (Earl was dyslexic.) They’ll finally fix that, Willa thought. Or not.

She stopped and stared out over the womanly foothills that rubbed up against the masculine mountains of the Lewis and Clark National Forest, the friction of the two holding this town in place. She had always thought if the hills didn’t push back, those mountains would have swept the whole valley west, right into the Missouri River. She wasn’t pushing anymore. She couldn’t.

She picked up a rusty nail from the parking lot, rolling it between her fingers. Then she pressed it into her thumb, but not for blood, holding it there, imagining the invitation she really wanted—the invitation to return to everything that came before the desolate day last fall that had rewritten her history. Pull yourself together, Willa. The women are coming.

She pitched the rusty nail into the trash can, got in her truck, and drove home, trying not to look at the homemade signs attached to every single highway mile marker along the way:

please don’t buy our town.

please don’t buy our town.

please don’t buy our town.

Willa, Montana, did sympathy to perfection. Change, not so well. Abandonment, not at all.

She pulled onto her road and cut the engine. She could hear his voice telling her for the hundredth time that the truck was a ’74 Ford pickup—F-100, Forest Service green, with the first SuperCab. For our family, beaming like an about-to-be father of twins. She caught herself smiling in the side mirror and imagined herself on the passenger side, pregnant, holding his hand, so proud of this land and how they cared for it. And this family of four that was about to be.

She looked at her meadow, cupped by the ridge behind it and Bison Butte in the close distance, and imagined it fractured. House, house, house, house, house. Maybe a mill. Maybe a silver mine. Maybe shopping outlets. A cell phone tower. Natural gas rig mats. A power line slicing it right down the middle.

I’m sorry, Jack, she whispered, and swiped the tears from her cheeks. But she was practical before she was romantic, and a mother first and foremost. Her boys needed her to move on, even though they didn’t understand that yet. They’d swallowed it like the bitter pill that it was. You gotta do what you gotta do, Sam had said. Ned had nodded and looked at Bison Butte.

Willa put her hands in her pockets and felt the thank-you note she’d toiled over. She hadn’t had the guts to tack it to the Community Board. It could never say enough and it could never say it right. Because it wasn’t enough and it wasn’t right, and it never would be. She read it now:

Wherever we all end up, I wish us all love, peace, joy, and the beauty of this place to live in us always. Thank you for being who you have been to my family. And to Willa, MT. I am so sorry that I have to move on. I’ll love you all forever. Willa.

She crumpled it up and put it back in her pocket.

To the white-tailed deer who grazed in the meadow, she said a stern, "Absolutely … no … woe … is … me." It might just be herself and three Not Local women in her home the night of the nineteenth, but at least there would be a proper goodbye to Willa Homestead. Willa, Montana, would be a vision in her rearview mirror on her way out of town on the road to So Now What.

Day One

Willa woke just before dawn, as was her custom, and walked the meadow. The women were coming … and she wasn’t ready. On the outside, yes. The beds were made, the bread and soup prepared, lilies of the valley in a vase on each of the nightstands. But not ready in the way that really mattered. Ready meant that she was that much closer to goodbye.

Dawn wasn’t any better at easing the pain. Dawn flashed, as it always did, and always would, relentless: the flash that couldn’t take itself back, the birds already making their proclamations in the trees and sky, the deer standing at attention from their matted-grass nests.

This morning it was as if they were milking dawn into day, eager for this reception—like they’d met in the night and agreed to perch in particular places to greet the three women as they arrived in Montana. The creature world accepted its future without needing to know its parts. The creature world still said, Hey, Willa.

She reached her arms out to all of it. You know how to end things. I’ve watched you lose fawns to trucks and ducklings to foxes. You mourn only for a second. And then you just go on so gracefully. I want to do this like you!

And as the sun crested Bison Butte and floodlit the meadow, she saw her answer. She saw it in the duck couples out for a morning swim—mallards, mergansers, and goldeneyes. She saw it in the four young bucks grazing in the tall grass along the drive. In the red-winged blackbirds, alert as soldiers, churring in the cattails, and in the sandhill cranes strutting the fence line. Even a mountain bluebird, sunning itself on a tree snag, seemed to want Willa to know that she’d done the right thing by sending those invitations. The Homestead would hold her for one more week. And these women too.

I really don’t have to do this leaving … alone? she whispered, taking heart in the fact that this meadow called upon you to rest. Linger. Stay awhile and be better for it, like so many wanderers had. She took in a deep breath of the sweet May air that smelled so much like her babies’ heads—she’d never get over that smell. Maybe this week of women really would help. Willa wanted to believe it was possible.

She picked armfuls of lilacs to bring up to the house, dropped her nose into their tart domes, and remembered her best friend’s words: Willa. Simply put, you need help.

It was Bliss’s idea—Willa’s best friend from the second they met at summer camp on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Junior counselor to camper, it was a typical innocent girl crush. Even then, the younger Bliss was the advisor, and Willa the dreamer. Bliss had been as intrigued by Willa’s Chicago as Willa had been by Bliss’s Wisconsin, and they’d written each other weekly postcards through the years and never faltered. Bliss told tales from small-town America—of marching bands, church socials, girls who married young, parents who expected her to do-as-we-say-and-do (and Bliss had).

It felt grounding to Willa, who told tales of rallies, protests, museums, and once-banned books her professor parents expected her to read and understand. Bliss had been a mature thirteen, and sixteen-year-old Willa had been smitten with her first taste of rural steadiness. The two were attached at the hip and had remained so through the years—back and forth in postcards all the way until last month when Willa had sent one that read: If you’d like one last visit, you better come quick. I’m selling Willa, MT. The Homestead, the Inn, the town. Everything. The auction is on May 19.

A week later, the phone rang, and Bliss’s velvet voice quelled the panic of packing boxes and slowly emptying rooms. Willa Silvester. What on earth?

Bliss. I … Willa faltered, crying months of tears into the phone.

I know, sweetheart. Let it out. You don’t have to be strong with me.

I can’t … do … it, Bliss. I thought I could, but I can’t. Willa stopped herself, but knowing her friend had her ear to her phone was too much. I took a bad fall. Off the hayloft. I spent weeks in bed. I could barely move. I let the whole place … go. She gasped between sobs, still feeling the ache in her back ribs. I didn’t harvest the potatoes. I let the apples fall and rot. I canned nothing. I closed up the Inn. I—I gave away the horses. And the chickens. There’re mice running around everywhere. She gasped a breath again. And I had to put Dash down. That … was … the last … thing … I … could handle. The boys are gone. And Jack—

I know, honey.

"I thought I was so much … stronger. I’m so ashamed."

Oh, that’s silly, my friend. I’ll bet the whole town was up there at the Homestead clamoring to take care of you, if I know Willa, Montana.

Willa was quiet.

You didn’t tell them, did you? Just like you didn’t tell me. Or your boys, I suspect.

Willa’s face twisted with shame, relieved that her friend couldn’t see her. Then she inhaled as deeply as she could so she could blast, Word got out. And they tried to help! But I wouldn’t let them. I told them I was fine. She swallowed hard. And I repaid their kindness by giving up on the dream and calling an auctioneer. She shook her head. Nobody has any idea why, and I can’t tell them. And no one is talking to me. Why would they? And with the last of it she said, "These are my people, Bliss."

Willa. Why aren’t they talking to you?

It’s a long story. But suffice it to say … even if I hadn’t had the accident … She swallowed hard again and pushed herself. I can’t afford to stay. Our money is all gone. And I don’t know why. But I have a pretty good feeling it had to do with Jack and how much he loved these people. And if I tell them that, they’ll be more ashamed than angry. And I don’t want that for them. She sniffed and threw her shoulders back. "I have to leave. This is not a one-woman show. Jack used to quote Emerson: To be great is to be misunderstood. I don’t know if I’ll ever be great. But I have learned this: sometimes you just have to let yourself be misunderstood."

Willa, you’ve got the purest heart of anyone I know.

She didn’t like compliments, but she forced herself to feel her friend’s kindness. She’d missed kindness. Life in Willa, Montana, had always been so kind. "Bliss, I have no idea what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. And you know as well as anyone that it’s killing me to pack it all up. There’re half-empty boxes in every room. It’s a mess. I’m a mess. I don’t know this person I’ve become. I wake up in the morning and just feel this low ache in my chest. And I can’t shake it. Every night I hope that when I wake up, it’s going to be gone. But when I open my eyes in the morning—even before I open my eyes … I know it’s still there. She forced the next phrase. You know how crazy about each other we were."

It was truly rare, said Bliss.

Stop, Willa. No one wants to hear this. Not even Bliss, and especially not after what she’s just been through. But the words rolled out anyway. "Sometimes I just sit on the floor and catch myself staring into space thinking: I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. And I don’t just mean with the rest of my life. I mean with the next second. I’ve never felt this way. I’m so … scared, Bliss. Scared isn’t something we do around here. She stopped herself. Sorry. I just don’t know how to do this."

Keep going, sweetheart. Let it all out. You need to, said her friend.

"I don’t have anyone to talk about it with, Bliss. Or anyone to help me figure out what to do. Or how to save this town. Everyone’s broke. There’s no local economy without us. But there is no us anymore. Shit! She bore into her tears and tried to stop them. I don’t know where I belong anymore. It took me a long time to belong here! She gasped, hating her self-pity. And I miss my damn dog."

Oh, sweetheart, said Bliss. If you weren’t scared, you wouldn’t be human. And being human is a lot to admit to … for you. Please take that as a compliment.

Willa got her tears under control. "I’m so sorry to burden you with this. You’ve gone through so much. We should talk more often. It’s so nice to hear your voice. I’ve been really … lonely. I didn’t realize how completely reliant I was on Jack and the boys. I catch myself talking to him, like he’s in the next room. Like he’s still here. I feel so … pathetic."

Bliss let out a little hum like a prelude to a lullaby. Willa. Listen to me. The last thing you are is pathetic. And if it helps any, I think that there are plenty of us out there who feel like you do. Especially at our age. We’re right on the heels of everything our young lives made. Or didn’t make.

Bliss paused, and Willa knew she was grieving all the miscarriages, the two failed adoptions, and now the divorce. "Our toes are on the shadows of what’s next. And we’re scared and we’re suffering and we’re lonely. And we don’t know how to find one another. Or admit it. So we stiffen our upper lip and pretend we’re okay. We are not okay. At least I’m not. And you’re not."

"No. I am not okay. Willa wished Bliss was there to crawl into bed with, like they had as girls, and hide from the world. How did we get this way, Bliss? I’m an island. Even when everyone was still talking to me … all winter, I’ve been a total recluse. I don’t know how to call on my community, and it isn’t calling on me anymore. Do you feel like an island too?"

Completely.

They were both silent.

Bliss started to speak but stopped herself.

What?

"What if we opened up the Homestead—the Inn, the barn—all of it, and had a gathering of women? A small gathering of islands who maybe don’t even realize how isolated they’ve become. And how badly they need a safe community. Even if it’s temporary. Just a small group of us who are all trying to figure out what comes next. And who just need a break from life."

Willa cringed. That sounds lovely. In theory. But I couldn’t take care of a barn cat right now, never mind a community of women.

"You wouldn’t have to. We’d take care of ourselves, just together. We’d put the Homestead to good use—what you created it for. I can’t imagine Willa Silvester leaving her Homestead without letting it give its gift one last time. And it’ll do you good."

Willa sighed. She knew it was true.

What if you invite me, and I invite a dear friend who is looking down the barrel of So Now What, and she asks another friend who is too? Four friends of friends. And we come to each other at your beautiful Homestead. And we help you get your place packed up. Because that’s what women do. Or used to do before we forgot how badly we need each other. And you don’t have to host us or do anything. Just being away from our lives and in Montana and with each other … might help us find our answers.

I think I’d like that.

"I’ll take that as a yes. Bliss’s voice rose a few notes like it did when a solid plan was in the making. How about this: You write an invitation to make it official. You are the consummate hostess after all, and you’ve always had a way with words. I supply you with their addresses so all you have to do is send the invitations. I can just picture it, with that gorgeous paper you make with the herbs, and that beautiful wax seal you always use for your winter Solstice cards. They’ll say yes, because of course they will. Their dear friend has already given them a good talking-to and made a persuasive case for their futures! Willa could picture Bliss’s stalwart, unbudgeable stare. They get that invitation in the mail, and it calls to them with a force they haven’t felt in years. And we all fly out there the week of the auction. And we help you pack. And we’ll throw a goodbye party whether the town likes it or not. We’ll put the Willa Homestead to bed with one last burst of celebration for its namesake!"

I was like that not too long ago, thought Willa. She couldn’t imagine it now. To be honest … I was going to sneak away the day after the auction. I can’t imagine hosting a party, Bliss. No one would come, anyway.

"We’ll be the party. You can’t say a proper goodbye sneaking out the back door, Willa."

I can’t ask strangers to help me pack up my life.

Why not?

What do I write on the invitation? I’m not my old self. At all.

"Just write: You are invited to the rest of your life."

***

Now, Willa waited. Everything was ready. Woodstove creaking with heat. Early pea and mint soup bubbling on the stove. Her hard-crusted bread, just out of the oven, airy in the middle with her kitchen’s wild yeast. Her signature strawberry rhubarb pie was cooling on the counter. She’d even put on her best wool shawl, teal blue, which fell over her best long linen skirt, instead of Jack’s old hunting sweater and work pants, which she’d worn holes in all winter. She pulled the shawl up to her chin for a moment. Marilyn had made it for her birthday years ago. Maybe being with these women would feel like this shawl. Bliss’s compass was something to trust. Her own … not so much anymore.

The women had rented a car in Great Falls and were due any minute. Bliss, her simple, stern, God-fearing, long-distance best friend. Harriet, Bliss’s childhood idol who’d taken Most Likely to Succeed so high up the ranks of self-help guru-dom, that she had pushed it over the edge and herself along with it. Jane, Harriet’s best friend from their wild days as roommates in New York City, who was now living the perfect Christmas-card life in the suburbs of Connecticut, apparently perfectly miserable.

Shit! Willa shouted, throwing open the door and standing barefoot on her front porch. Panic swept around her like the blowing leaves she’d ignored all fall, still stuck in the porch corners. She suddenly didn’t want strangers anywhere near her beloved land or her beloved house. Or her beloved ghosts. The house was alive to her and had been for two decades. It had taught her how to be the woman that she had become. And it had gotten her through the winter, demanding that she get out of bed and make tea and phone her boys. It called her out to its porches to see that winter was over and the apple trees were beginning to bud. It held her in its sturdy walls that Jack had built and she had painted. It showed her that she was alive when it let predawn through its windows and forced her to open her eyes. It winked at her when it creaked and cooled in the night air. Life is still possible, it promised her.

Get yourself together, she said, in a voice that was more the house’s than hers, and went inside, pulling the door shut. She stopped at the gate-legged table and ran her hand over the endless country dust. Adjusted the lilacs in the old blue spatterware vase. Leaned in toward the age-spotted mirror, which mottled her green eyes, or maybe this was just the way they looked now. She’d been ignoring mirrors all winter. It was like middle age had hit the minute Jack died, the grays salting her chocolate-brown hair in a coarse grind. She tucked her hair behind her ears. That was one thing she wasn’t going to mourn: her youth. As Jack always said, Willa was born old.

Then she turned to the front door, putting her hand on the sturdy weathered wood like it was Jack’s back, and said, There’ll be four of us again for a few days. Do your magic. Please.

buh

buh buh

buh

buh 

… bum bum.

Willa leaped back.

They were here.

Life would move now.

She took in a deep breath, whispered, Here we go … and opened the door.

Bliss stood on the porch in her standard flower-print dress and old cardigan, her blunt ash bob and bangs, her arms wide open. And Willa folded into them as she always did, forgetting how a hug from Bliss was like a hug from the most loving, doting grandmother that ever lived.

Bliss gathered her by the shoulders and