jade hollow

jade has lived in that house for seven years. for seven years she's been swinging off that rope swing into the creek and wandering through the redwoods and oak trees of the forest. you take acorn ridge road for five miles past the highway, follow it through the vineyards and ranches until you come to little old apple blossom road, and you know you're almost there. from there everybody calls it "jade hollow" even though she rents her little house from the klippers and most of that property out there belongs to them, as well as the apple orchard and the goats and the ranchhouse.

you drive over the hill, over the wooden bridge and down the tiny dirt road and you feel it, jade's out there, you open your windows and feel the air like peach skin and mustard flowers. you feel the quiet air on your face until you hear her singing.

i't such a long strange story i want to tell, i get the shivers just imagining trying to begin it. it's not just about jade either, although she's queen of this forest. it's the full moon of july, it's her sisters and brothers and the old mission and the grapevines. it is secrets you find down deep in the well. it is a stone that breathes and rainbows that sigh in the wind.

i was best friends with her brother rafael. i'd known the caraway family all my life. my mother, leona anderson farrar, was best friends with their crazy mother, annabelle castle caraway since high school in santa rosa. we moved away for awhile to tuscon arizona but when we came back rafael and i started hanging out again and then we were asked to be the djs at jade's wedding to benjamen culver.

she was 22 years old and she looked like a black-haired fairy princess. she wore this gauzy soft creamy dress that looked like it would float away like dandelion puffs. she had barefeet and an anklet made of tiny wildflowers. she had apple blossoms in her hair and brown shoulders and arms that were so beautiful it just about makes you want to cry. scary.