Mom coming out to see what was taking so long and then telling Dad he was wrong for that. “Boy’s too gullible,” Dad said.

“He gets it from you,” Mom said.

“Please, that’s from your family.”

Mom pointed near Dad’s shoes. “Dre, you dropped your pocket.”

Dad glancing down, Mom and I cracking up.

He’d spent the rest of that day trying to trick us. Happy when he’d finally fooled an unsuspecting Whit.

That night, at dinner, I announced my Carpet Denim.

“Did you know every day nearly two hundred thousand acres of forest are cut down? Well, I want to put a few trees back into the ground.”

If that stupid assembly had never happened, if I’d never brought home that tree, if . . .

If.

If.

A game that never ends.

Whit digs the next hole and her tears drop into the hole ahead of the sapling.

We sculpt and pat the earth around each small tree.

And there’s an eagle gliding back and forth across the horizon and Ms. B says it means this work will be blessed. I don’t push her for what blessed means, because it’s not what matters. Two years later, there is finally dirt beneath my fingernails, there are new trees in the ground.

Whit and I each plant two, and Q, Autumn, and Ms. B each plant one too.

When the final tree’s earthed, Whit walks back to the car, returns with two metallic vases filled with our parents’ ashes. I nod my approval.

“Yeah?” she verifies. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

We stand there in silence, until Whit reaches for my hand. Squeezes my fingers, just as a plane buzzes overhead. I reach for the tree closest to me. Rub one of its waxy leaves between my fingers.

And I say, “Mom, Dad, our love for you is at an al-pine high.”

And then everyone’s hugging and crying and generally all in our feelings until suddenly Whit’s all hold up hold up hold up.

And we stop in our tracks and wait for her to say whatever she needs to say.

Except it turns out she doesn’t want to say anything.

Well, not exactly.

“There is one more thing our trees need to be complete,” she says, reaching into a large garbage bag, which I’d wondered why it was there, but then naturally assumed it was for . . . garbage.

But what Whit pulls out of that trash bag is garbage.

And also it’s gold.

And I know my face is all kinds of bewildered. Astounded. “How in the world did you get that?”

Whit shrugs, smiles. “When I saw it had been ripped down from the tree, it didn’t take me long to piece together the who.”

“You found it in the trash bin.”