Free Beneath the Night Tree by Nicole Baart

shrugged. “In the circus.” In reality, I don’t know if I ever wanted to run away with the circus; I was merely addicted to the rush of doing the one thing my dad prohibited me from doing. But Daniel loved to embellish, so I let him. I imagined he pictured me in sequins and feathers, though I never wore anything beyond my uniform of faded denim and hand-me-down shirts. “So I wanted to be a tightrope walker, and Grandpa’s barn had the perfect place for me to practice.”
    “A tightrope?”
    “Nope, a beam. A great, big wooden beam that stretched from the north end of the barn to the south.”
    “But there was hay beneath it.”
    “There was hay beneath part of it,” I agreed. “But at the south end of the barn, the hayloft opened up over the animal stalls.”
    “But you didn’t walk there.”
    “I did,” I said, giving his ear a little tweak.
    “You were naughty,” Daniel laughed.
    “I was adventurous.”
    “You were naughty,” Grandma agreed with Daniel and gave me a stern look. Addressing my son, she said, “Your mother should have never done such a foolish thing.”
    “Yeah, ’cause she could have fallen and hit her head and died .”
    It was a warning that I had used just once when Daniel climbed on the counter to swipe a cookie from the cookie jar. I was petrified of what the hard floor would do to his sweet, soft head, and I shouted the first thing that came to my mind. Daniel never forgot it. Now, if anyone did anything even remotely unsafe, they were surely going to fall and hit their head and die .
    The first chuckle came from Simon, a wet burst of laughter that told me he had been holding in just such a giggle for a long time. Then Grandma was laughing and finally Daniel and I joined in, though Daniel asked, “What are we laughing at?”
    “Nothing, honey.”
    “You know,” Grandma said, “I could tell you lots of other stories about when your mom was little. There was one winter that Grandpa got a new batch of chicks, and your mom—”
    “Thought they were cute,” I burst out, placing a warning hand on Grandma’s arm. She grinned at me but let it drop.
    We walked past the barn to the very peak of the sloping hill that stood sentinel over the length of our property. At the top, Grandma stopped in the shade of a gnarled oak tree and spread out the blanket she had snagged when we passed through the mudroom. From the square boundary of our makeshift table, we could see to the farthest edge of the DeSmit farm. Eighty acres spread before us, rising and falling as if the breath of God swept over the ocean of green. Grandma rented out the land, and the man who farmed it had planted soybeans just beyond the barn and corn in the second parcel. I was grateful that there were no tall plants to block our view. On a bright, clear day like this, we could practically count the leaves on the trees that bordered the creek between sections.
    “Who needs the park when we’ve got a vista like this?” Grandma asked.
    We ate quietly, with a certain attentive diligence as if we were spellbound by the world around us. But my thoughts weren’t nearly so peaceful, and when Grandma finally broke out the cupcakes and announced, “I think it’s time to talk,” I startled as if I had been deep in a trance.
    “Daniel—” Grandma wiped the corner of her mouth with a napkin—“why don’t you go explore behind the barn? It’s cool and shady there, and when your mother was little, she could always find frogs in the tall grass.”
    “Frogs?” He stuffed the last of his cupcake in his mouth and took off at a sprint.
    “Thank you,” I said, grateful that Grandma didn’t see this as a family affair. “I’m not ready to tell him yet. Simon, I think you should leave too.”
    “But I already know.”
    “Know what?” Grandma murmured.
    “That she’s moving to Iowa City,” Simon muttered, gazing at the uneaten cupcake in his hand.
    Grandma didn’t say anything, but I could see the shock in the