They met in an earth sciences lecture during Jake’s first year at UBC. A fervent environmentalist, Silas brought her to fundraisers and documentary screenings—unwittingly rescuing her from solitary weekends spent in her dorm, leafing through botany texts, admiring branch structures as though they were fashionable outfits. He was clever, witty without being caustic, and in just a few months they had forged a bond of such intensity it felt as though they were symbiotically evolved organisms, incapable of independent survival. Soon, Jake was attending the surfeit of birthdays and anniversaries that Silas’s large, wealthy family seemed to celebrate endlessly. Feeling like a drifter who’d accidentally wandered into their ski chalets and lake houses, Jake watched his parents and five siblings collectively prepare elaborate meals, which they then shared at huge, lavishly set tables, amid the din of mirthful conversation. After Jake’s lonely upbringing, the fullness of Silas’s family life mystified her, and this fascination became impossible to disentangle from her feelings for him. Happily, Silas was intuitive enough never to ask about Jake’s past. Their conversations were all carbon credits and ecological devastation and Big Oil’s cancerous lobbying—this was the quaint period before the Withering when people still believed that well-intended, measured engagement could avert catastrophe. As graduation neared, Silas’s anxiety about their imminent separation grew; he proposed and made Jake vow that they would select geographically compatible grad schools. She agreed, and for a time she was content with her decision. But when she was offered a position with a pioneering researcher at Utrecht, and Silas a full ride at UC Irvine, Jake was faced with a choice: Silas or trees. Her panicked response was to block his calls, texts, and emails altogether, and to depart for the Netherlands with only strangers to see her off at the airport.
In short, Jake chose trees.
“God, I’ve missed this,” Silas says, after the trail has widened and they’re again walking side by side. “Sunshine, oxygen, soil, water—the raw material of life.”
“Silas,” she begins softly. “I know I didn’t end things in the best way—”
“Please don’t apologize, Jake,” Silas says, shaking his head. “It was a long time ago. And you did what you needed to do. I’m just happy to see that you went on to fully develop your talents.”
She thanks him, taking a mental microscope to his statement, hunting for trace elements of bitterness or condescension, but detects none.
“To be honest,” he continues, “I half-expected you to scream and run the other way when you saw me this morning.” So he did know it would be me, Jake realizes in a flash. “I’m happy you didn’t. It’s a relief to know that you’ve wound up in such a beautiful and secure place.”
“And where have you wound up?”
“San Francisco. Or what remains of it anyway. Actually, a gated community in Alameda. But I’m considering a move back to Canada. The dust storms are only getting worse, and with millions of people plunging deeper into poverty each day and all these climate refugees penetrating the borders—”
“Easy there, cowboy,” Jake says, careful to keep her tone light. “I’m an immigrant too, remember?”
“Oh, these aren’t hard-working strivers seeking opportunity like you, Jake. And they were no doubt good people once. But after a few years in the dust, they’re desperate enough to butcher your family and loot your home without even doing you the courtesy of first asking for a handout.”
There are plenty of points to argue, but Jake lets them drop because she can’t risk displeasing him. “Kids?” she asks, attempting to change the subject and immediately chiding herself for the clumsiness of it. Too premature.
He shakes his head, then returns her the same eyebrow-raised look.
Jake shakes her head. “The Cathedral can’t accommodate the children of employees. They even provide free birth control, just to make sure.” Jake leaves unmentioned the fact that she’d long ago filed motherhood away in the locked drawer that contains everything that the Withering has made impossible for people like her: her own home, a steady relationship, a research lab, a tenured teaching position. And even if she did have the money, why would anyone willingly bring a child into such a fallen, desolate world? Children require hope and prosperity as trees require light and water, and Jake Greenwood is all tapped out of both.
It’s not until she emerges from this quagmire of thoughts that Jake notices they’ve reached God’s Middle Finger. She gives her big speech while glancing up at the pair of sick firs, noting that their browned needles are unchanged from yesterday. Silas asks a few obligatory questions, but despite his attempts at playing the part of a Pilgrim, there’s an odd sense of dislocation about him, an impatient clock ticking behind everything he says.
“You mentioned earlier that you were expecting me this morning,” Jake says as they walk to the picnic area for a water break. “This isn’t exactly a coincidence, is it?”
Silas cracks a sheepish smile. “Jake, you should know that after I got to grad school I abandoned biology for law.”
No wonder he’s being so forgiving, Jake thinks, he wants something. She considers the possibility that he might be there to fire her. Then why wouldn’t Holtcorp just send a team of Rangers instead? “And now you’re a lawyer for Holtcorp?”
“I work for an independent legal firm that does occasionally act for Holtcorp, yes. But I also work for you,” he says, his eyes now soft and open, almost wounded. “Or at least I’d like to.”
“Just how do you intend to do that?” Jake asks skeptically.
Silas laughs nervously. “This is all going a little fast—my plan was to put this to you over dinner tonight.”
“Private tours don’t include dinner,” she says curtly. “And yours is nearly over.”
“Okay, fine,” he says, throwing up his hands in surrender. “I’m here because this entire island could be yours, Jake. I mean legally yours. And I’m here to help you make that a reality. But to establish whether this is possible, I need you to answer a few questions about your family. Particularly concerning your father, Liam Greenwood.”
So he’s a vulture, Jake thinks. Since the Withering, she has read about this new breed of lawyer who searches out legal corpses to pick over: unresolved wills, mishandled inheritances, loopholes they can weave into some kind of land-grab or court challenge. But Jake would have expected Silas to be smarter than this. Conditions must really be dire out there if he’s aiming to use the flimsy coincidence of her surname as a means to lay claim to a billion-dollar forest.
“Holtcorp named this resort the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral because it sounded good, Silas,” Jake says. “Purely a branding decision. Nothing to do with me. My father was a carpenter who died while renovating a house in Connecticut—I don’t even know the exact day it happened. Sound like the kind of guy who owns an island to you?” After mentioning her father aloud for the first time in years, she feels the muscles inside her throat crank as tight as guitar strings.
“I know this is difficult,” Silas says with his neck canted sympathetically. “But will you please just hear me out and not run away this time? Don’t you owe me that much?”