That evening, Tess turned back to the fourth-lane entry and placed a small question mark beside it. She added another to the newer lane, then measured the approximate distance between the two on their rough sketch. "That is strange," she said.
"The goats like tall leaves," Nora replied.
"They like tall leaves everywhere. Why those two places?"
"Because something's holding the vines up."
Tess looked at her. "Then shouldn't we find out what?"
Nora had no answer that did not involve adding another task to days already full of work. She was managing water deliveries, checking Mercy's healed hoof, repairing the netting, and trying to clear enough ground to avoid a county bill she could not pay. She penciled a circle around the two question marks and went outside to turn the goats into their night pen.
The mystery waited until the third pass through the red-ribbon lane. By then, new rose shoots had climbed through the old canes, and the animals moved toward them as if they remembered every useful corner. The air was heavy and still. Nora watched Hazel pull a mouthful of vine and brace herself against the ground. Another goat seized the same growth from a different angle. They drew backward together, and a large, dead sheet of rose cane shifted overhead.
The sound was sudden, like a stack of dry sticks sliding off a shed roof. Nora called the goats back. The tangle dropped in front of them and settled with a rustling that lasted several seconds. Where the vines had been, there was gray bark.
Nora stood without moving. It was a trunk, broader than any privet she had seen on the property. Thick ridges of bark rose through scars left by old vine pressure, and branches disappeared into a crown she had assumed belonged to several separate trees. Near the base, a swollen, irregular section interrupted the trunk before the roots widened into the soil.
She moved the goats into the neighboring lane, cut the charger, and returned with pruning shears. Working slowly, she loosened the vines still hanging against the bark. Dead canes snapped in her hands. The trunk widened as she moved around it, revealing a tree that had been standing there long before the blackberries claimed its lower branches.
Nora touched the bark and felt the dry roughness beneath her thumb. The tree was alive. She could see green leaf growth in the canopy now that she knew which branches belonged to it. A few small fallen twigs at its base carried narrow leaflets, but she was not confident enough to name the species. She was only certain the tree was larger, older, and more deliberate-looking than anything in the county pictures.
Hazel pushed through the opening and tested the exposed trunk with her teeth. Nora caught the doe by the collar before she could take another bite. Wade's warning returned with uncomfortable clarity. Uncovering a valuable tree would mean little if the animals that uncovered it damaged its bark afterward.