TPCF 71

CHAPTER 71……………………..

In front of Sarah Baylan, whose brow was deeply furrowed with worry for him, Rutger casually said something as cutting as, “Well, we came back anyway, so isn’t that enough?” Then, without so much as a glance at his foster father, he walked straight into the house.

That left Anita to face the adults’ questioning. She wasn’t shameless enough to pretend she’d done nothing wrong.

Leaving out the part about running into Trey and Rutger tripping him, Anita struggled to explain what had happened. After barely four minutes, her face had gone paler than ever. Mrs. Rodel hugged her daughter, close to tears, while Mr. Rodel—apparently the sort who found crying disgraceful—turned away to sniffle in secret.

In the end, Anita was forbidden from stepping foot outside her room for three days. And when Trey’s mother, Mrs. Raven, came storming over, those three days were stretched into a full week.

The next day, Anita lay face-down on her bed, dazed, when her arm bumped into something. She picked it up. The box was wrapped in pretty green paper and tied with a yellow ribbon.

Oh, right. The lemon pie.

Luckily, thanks to the chilly weather these past few days, it didn’t seem spoiled. She should have given it to him yesterday….

After some hesitation, Anita opened her window. The window opposite was about two meters away—a span big enough for a tall grown man to lie across with room to spare. Gauging the distance between the rooms, Anita rummaged around until she found the butterfly net she’d used back when she was obsessed with collecting bugs. She slipped the gift box into the net.

But the box was heavy, and the thin pole wasn’t very sturdy, so the net wobbled precariously in the air. Struggling to steady it, Anita finally hooked the net onto Rutger’s window frame and pushed it upward.

She tapped the window a few times. It flew open, and Rutger’s face appeared—first weary with annoyance, then startled as he saw Anita and her net.

“You—what are you doing this time…?”

“Take it!”

Anita was desperate; her arm felt like it was about to fall off. Rutger, urged on, grabbed the box from the net.

“Ah—”

Because Anita was barely holding onto the end of the pole to stretch it farther, the moment he took the box, the net slipped from her grasp and tumbled to the bushes below. Rutger glanced down at the fallen net, then looked back at Anita with an incredulous expression. His gaze wiped her mind completely blank.

When flustered, the brain empties and the mouth grows reckless. Anita babbled:

“That was the longest thing I could find in my room. And I didn’t mean to drop it—it just kind of happened….”

“What is this?”

Rutger cut her off, shaking the box.

“No! Don’t shake it! It’s lemon pie—you’ll crush it!”

“Lemon pie?”

Rutger set the box down. Anita, worried the pie might have lost its shape, wasn’t even listening to him.

“Why?”

He asked, and Anita answered absently,

“Because you like it, so I bought it.”

“…Really?”

Rutger’s expression shifted strangely, but Anita didn’t notice.

At twelve years old, Anita was utterly absorbed in adventure novels, and she had a fascination with treehouses. It was the age where you wanted to try whatever came into your head, and she desperately wanted one. Fortunately, Anita had a way to make that dream a reality.

Not by herself, of course, but with a helper.

“Mr. Müller.”

Müller paused, long hedge clippers in hand—half as tall as Anita herself. He had been trimming the hedges neatly along the fence. Setting the clippers down on a toolbox, he turned to look at her.

“Could you build me a treehouse?”

With stubble on his chin and roses tattooed along his arm, Müller was the Rodels’ gardener. His intimidating appearance alone ensured that the rowdy neighborhood kids, who roamed about making trouble everywhere else, never dared set foot in the Rodels’ yard.

“A treehouse? In the middle of the city?”

“But our neighborhood is kind of on the outskirts, isn’t it?”

Anita clung to him despite his blunt refusal. She even opened up a gardening book she’d gotten from who-knows-where, trailing after him all day.

“Do you know what’s great about treehouses, Mr. Müller?”

“…”

“You can help protect wildlife. Animals with nowhere else to go could—”

“You really think wild animals would show up in a place that reeks of people?”

When persuasion didn’t seem to be working, Anita rushed to offer another reason.

“There’s another benefit to treehouses!”

“…”

“You could take naps there when you’re tired from working in the garden.”

“Oh, and then I’d get caught by my employer and lose my job, is that it?”

“When I grow up, I’ll hire you again. Maybe ten years from now?”

“So I’m supposed to live unemployed for ten years, am I?”

“You wouldn’t stay jobless for ten years! Someone else would hire you.”

In the end, Müller laughed and gave in to Anita’s request. Not long after construction began on the treehouse—

Rutger, who usually couldn’t care less whether someone next door died or construction work went on, was dragged over by Anita’s pestering. He looked up at the huge old tree rooted in her yard and remarked indifferently,

“It’s just a tree. Been here since the day I moved in.”

“Technically, it’s over a hundred years old. Anyway, what do you think?”

His eyes trailed lazily up the trunk.

“Cool. It’s even got footholds now.”

“Right? So now we can live up there like Andy—”