Monica felt the familiar signs of panic rise through her system. Stomach knotted, breath short, heartrate elevated. Cold sweat and the recurrent thought that she was making a stupid mistake.
It wasn’t too late to turn back. I don’t have to go down there, she thought. I’ve gone my whole life not knowing. Why change now?
She breathed deeply and evenly, like she’d practiced, until her pulse began to slow.
No. You’ve come this far. You’ve set it up with Francine. You’ve taken a flight and rented a car. Stop letting fear control you.
Monica put the car back in drive and turned up the long driveway. As a dendrologist, she automatically observed the trees. The oaks had been planted at regular intervals from the road to the mansion. She estimated them to be fifty years old, given their height and canopy size, but it was their healthiness that stood out most. She couldn’t see a single instance of leaf blister, oak wilt, or Endothia canker. As usual, employing her ability to observe plants distracted her from her worries, if only for a few moments.
The mansion looked equally suited for a horror or a romance movie. Big, old, Southern, formerly grand, paint chipping a bit. Monica parked, and after getting out and smoothing her clothing, ascended the wooden steps.
She knocked.
No answer.
“Hello, Francine?” she said, knocking again. “It’s Monica.”
Nothing. When she called Francine, she could hear an old phone ringing inside the house.
Did I screw up and come at the wrong time? she thought, and double checked her notes. No, this was when they agreed on.
What if Francine had fallen and was on the floor somewhere? What if she had died?
Stop catastrophizing, Monica thought. Perhaps Francine just forgot. Perhaps she’s taking a nap. Perhaps—
“Monica?”
An old woman stood at the foot of the steps holding a shovel. She had tanned, wrinkled arms, comically oversized gloves, and a floppy hat with a wide brim that partially hid her face.
“I’m Francine. Sorry if you were waiting. I was just getting some gardening done around back. Would you like something? Water, biscuits, coffee?”
“No, thank you.”
“If you don’t mind, we can talk while I finish up. Looks like we have a touch of bad weather coming, and I’d like to get my plants planted before the rain starts.”
“Sure,” Monica said. “I appreciate you seeing me.”
She followed Francine down a narrow path to a garden full of larkspur, dogrose, chicory, and poppies. Bees swarmed across the flowers. Their benign, single-minded focus calmed her.
“So, you want to learn about Greg,” Francine said. “That right?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a reporter with one of these online places? Because if it’s about the woman, I don’t want to talk, unless you’re trying to straighten the real facts out.”
“I want to hear about Greg, but I’m not writing about…that. I’m not writing about anything at all. I’m not a reporter.”
“What are you?”
Clearly there had been some misunderstanding on the phone, for Francine to ask this. Monica thought about the various ways to answer. She might as well get to the point as quickly and bluntly as possible.
“I’m his daughter.”
“Oh.” Francine squinted at Monica’s face. “Yes. Now I see the resemblance.”
Monica considered saying how she’d taken a DNA test for fun and found out her father was not her father. Then how her mother and “father” had died, and she learned that Greg, landscaping company owner from Georgia, was her biological father. And how she had thought about visiting him but didn’t; then heard about an awful criminal case and found out he died shortly after, and thought about going to the memorial service, but didn’t. And how now, regretting waiting so long but also afraid of what she might learn, she decided to investigate her heritage.
Monica said, “People told me to talk to you, because you know everybody and everything that happens around here.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, but I did know Greg from way back, and I’m happy to answer anything I can. It’s good to know your roots.”
They stopped by some partially dug holes with violets and bachelor buttons in disposable pots ready to be planted.
“It must’ve been over sixty years ago that I met Greg. He was the archetypal country boy. He’d hunt for frogs, swim to lake islands when his parents told him not to, and one year he made his own dug-out canoe from a tree he chopped down. He’d chase girls with spiders, and one time, put a salamander in my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” Francine smiled. “Greg was energetic, but also very bright and mechanical, with a logical side you don’t always see, and could think circles around most people. Other than his youthful pranks he was very caring, and in the end that cost him the most, I suppose, because he stopped listening to his logic. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”
Francine paused to examine the roots of a plant she had just pulled from its pot. She poked at them here and there, before plucking out a fat white grub. “You never know what’s hiding under the surface,” she said, placing the grub on a rock. With the back of her trowel, she transformed the grub from a living thing to a mangled wet spot.
Francine continued, “There’s no doubt in my mind that Greg could’ve gone to any Ivy League college around. For a little while, it looked like he was going. But one day his daddy ran off with a waitress, and his mama passed away not long after, and his grandmother was old and sick. There was no other family around, so Greg decided to stay and take care of her. He got a shovel and wheelbarrow and some other tools and hired himself out as a landscaper. You saw all those trees on either side of the drive?”
Monica nodded.
“Greg planted them all by himself. It was his first big job. My daddy hired him. I’ll tell you what, Greg worked like a maniac on that job. He’d be there before sunup and stay well past supper time. He’d work through the heat. Can you imagine planting all that completely by yourself? He must’ve hauled a hundred big bags of fertilizer. Except for the barest essentials he needed to survive, every penny he made went to his grandmother.”
“I was admiring the trees on the way here,” Monica said. “I’m actually a dendrologist and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many oaks this perfectly healthy.”
She considered adding, like she usually had to, That means a tree scientist.
But Francine’s expression contained comprehension, and she said, “The love of plants must be in your blood.”
Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance.
After a pause Francine said, “Hand me those violets, please—I don’t think we have much time. Thanks. Greg had a thumb greener than a turnip leaf in August. People used to joke that he did voodoo or some sort of black magic. With plants growing like that, and his work ethic and charm, it didn’t take long for Greg to get more business than he could handle. He hired a helper, and then another and another, and soon he had a team and a real landscaping business and was making good money.”
Monica was about to speak when her phone buzzed with an emergency alert signal. She looked at it. Tornado sighting.
***
The storm cellar’s worn steps disappeared into absolute blackness. Francine stood at the entrance with a candle. “You first, please, so I can lock the door behind us.”
The stairs creaked as Monica took a few steps down. “Just to let you know,” she said, forcing humor into her dry voice, “if I see a bunch of dolls down here with missing eyes, I’m going to freak out.”
Francine laughed. “Don’t worry, there are no dolls, cracked mirrors, or rusty meat hooks.” She pulled the cellar door shut. “Now there may be spiders. Nothing to be concerned about. Just black widows.”
The still air smelled musty but not rotten. It reminded Monica of an antique store. Francine lit some more candles, transforming the black pit into a chamber of flickering amber light, and got comfortable in a rocking chair. Monica spent a moment looking for spiders on her rocker before she took a seat.
“So, where were we?” Francine asked, candlelight illuminating different aspects of her face. Sometimes it aged her, or removed her wrinkles, or brought out the hollows of her eyes.
“He was becoming a successful landscaper.”
“Ah, yes. Within a few years Greg was the most popular landscaper around. I think he could have become a national brand if he wanted to. But he did a surprising thing. Then again, maybe it wasn’t surprising at all, given his character. Here’s something you’ve got to understand—I wouldn’t trade living here for anything, but these parts have had more than their share of bad luck and ill omens. There’ve been lots of disappearances over the years. People go missing. Travelers come and don’t come out. Some say it’s the gators, some say it’s a curse.”
The wind made sounds like a whispering ghost above their heads.
“Whenever something tragic happened, Greg was there to help. He musta spent a fortune on widows and orphans and taking care of funeral arrangements. I think he stuck around and never let his business become too big because he wanted to keep giving to this community. And, despite all his smarts, he’d be driven up the wall sitting in an office wearing a suit and tie all day. He loved to get his hands dirty.”
The wind swooshed and howled.
Monica said, “Do you know anything about how my mother could have met him? This would have been thirty-nine years ago. Did he travel? I never knew Mom went to Georgia.”
“He was a very handsome young man, and he liked going to the beach in South Carolina. Could she have met him there?”
“My mom visited her friend Kathy in South Carolina every summer around the time I…would have been conceived.”
Monica thought back to the barbeques that their families had shared. Mom and Kathy making potato salad and cutting fruit, and the kids running around, and the husbands joking over the grill, content in the assumption that the kids they were raising were their own.
“What happened next?” Monica asked.
“Greg never married, which surprised a good deal of folks as he was a very eligible bachelor, but he said he liked privacy. No one had a bad word to say about him, and he was never involved in any sort of controversy until the thing happened.” Francine took a deep breath, and shivered, like she was getting ready for the dentist to stick a drill in her teeth. “How much do you want to know?”
“Whatever you can tell me.”
“Greg liked to give people chances. He would sometimes hire released inmates and drifter types. He’d say, ‘How can we expect them to be part of society, if they’re treated like outcasts, even after serving their sentences?’ One of these drifters was a greasy, tattooed, beady-eyed type. Barely a grownup and already in and out of prison five times. I know justice is coming to him and I shouldn’t feel malice, but given what he did, I don’t want to even tell you his name.”
Francine paused, looking skull-like for a second in the candlelight, then continued. “So, while the drifter was on the crew, Greg got hired to completely redo the yard of a rich fella who owns some car dealerships. The car guy is a showman and had a lot of pretty young women as cheerleaders at the dealerships. He called them his ‘muffler girls.’
“He had a wife named Jane. Well, right after the landscaping was finished, Jane finds out that her husband was having an affair with one of his muffler girls. She chased him out of the house with a tennis racket and threw all his things into the driveway.
“Because they had gotten the new landscaping done right before then, and it had been his idea, I guess she couldn’t look at the trees without thinking of him and the muffler girl. Funny how people associate one thing with another. So, she called Greg and said she needed him to pull the trees out. Now. Immediately. That day, that moment. When he didn’t call her back instantly, she grabbed a shovel and started digging. That’s when, well—”
The wind, which had been gaining volume throughout Francine’s story, howled ferociously above their heads. But instead of dying down, the sound maintained its power and then increased in volume.
Monica imagined the ceiling peeling off. What would it feel like to be sucked out with all the furniture and flung through the air at a hundred miles per hour?
Francine raised her voice to carry over the noise. “Jane was digging up this tree. She got down under the roots and hit something. She couldn’t get through it, so she looked more closely, and saw a face and part of a hand, buried there, under the tree. That’s when the housekeeper showed up and found Jane running away screaming. The police eventually recovered the cut-up parts to a whole body. They identified it as the drifter’s girlfriend. Of course, he denied killing her. Said he didn’t know anything about how she got there, and that somebody must be out to get him, he was the real victim, and all the rest that criminals say when they get caught.
“Nobody who knew Greg really blamed him for hiring the killer, but with a thing like this and the trial, it tied his name and his company to such an awful story. These know-nothing reporters and internet people made up the most horrible things about it, all sorts of lies. They wanted—what do they call it?—their clicks and views. Greg ignored them, but he was very hard on himself, like it was his fault. I honestly think if it wasn’t for this terrible business, Greg would be alive today. That’s how much it hurt him.”
Monica thought of Greg’s death, as she had learned of it from newspaper articles and talking to locals. He’d taken his fan-boat into the swamp. Three days later a fisherman found the boat, with an empty whiskey bottle and a .38 revolver on the floorboards. Police determined the gun had recently been fired once. There was no note. They never found a body, but that didn’t surprise anyone familiar with the swamps. The community held a memorial service soon afterward.
Francine said, “I keep thinking, if it wasn’t for that two-timing husband causing Jane to start digging, that tree might have grown for years with a body underneath. Can you imagine?”
***
The wind’s rattling, chattering howls reduced in volume, and finally subsided altogether. Francine didn’t talk of Greg again, and Monica didn’t ask for further details. She had gotten enough. She felt numb. She wanted to get the hell out of here, go home, sleep in her bed, and think about anything other than cheaters and murderers and tornadoes.
As they climbed the cellar stairs, she forced herself to say, “Thank you for telling me about him. That was hard to hear, but I guess it’s better to know the truth.”
Given the sounds they heard from the cellar, Monica would not have been surprised to find the house in pieces, but it appeared remarkably intact. In fact, from the inside there was no indication that anything had happened, except for some water and leaves stuck to the windowpanes.
“The roads are probably blocked,” Francine said. “You’re welcome to stay here.”
“That’s generous of you, but I’ll see if I can make it.”
Then she thought, What if the car is smashed?
There was some mud and small branches on the car, but no visible damage. She felt a rush of relief and suddenly smelled the fresh, cool air, and saw sunrays dancing through the parting clouds.
When Monica allowed herself to perceive the rest of the scene, her joy turned to astonishment.
Over a dozen of the oaks lining the driveway had been uprooted. They’d been torn open in a way Monica would never expect for such healthy-looking trees. It fit the pattern of destruction that occurred in the final stages of heart-rot disease.
Instinctively she approached to investigate. The trees had heaved semicircles of roots and earth into the air when they fell. The freshly torn roots stood out in bright patches against the dark, wet soil that clung to them. There was something else in those roots, other shapes, straight and curved and round.
Monica stopped walking. Her eyes darted back and forth along the driveway. Human bones and skulls were embedded in the tangled, mutilated roots of every fallen tree.
Every tree Greg had planted, by himself, all by himself, all those years ago.
[Image Credit : Photo by adrianna geo on Unsplash]
by 
Tom Rozek
Latest posts by Tom Rozek (see all)
- Good to Know Your Roots - June 21, 2026
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