If a Tree Falls in the Forest (Short Story)

"If a tree were to fall on an island where there were no human beings would there be any sound?"
-The Chautauquan magazine, June 1883

On a late summer day in Virginia, more than a century since it had been a mere seedling, a wolf tree spread its crown wide above the younger, smaller trees along the Appalachian Trail.
A man and a woman struggled below them all.
Having no ears to intercept sound, the tree didn’t hear the woman’s fierce attempts to fight for her life, or the man’s grunts as he shoveled the dirt over her. The tree didn’t register that this was the first in a series of similar scenes that would repeat in the coming years, like a brutal echo. Different women, different times of year, but always the same man.
Less than a dozen years later, a windy autumn followed on the heels of a soggy summer and the wolf tree fell. With no other large trees nearby to help protect it from the storm, its roots grasped at the soaked soil, but they were no match for the wind. It lay across the graves of three of the man’s victims. Arborists would classify the wolf tree’s cause of death as windthrow.
* * *

In the winter of 2007, a mother bear and her two yearlings made their den under the protection of the downed wolf tree’s crown, which was conveniently located far enough from the trail itself to avoid the risks that came with human interaction. They’d only just settled in when the sound of the man stashing his tarp-wrapped shovel just outside their den disturbed the mother bear.
Going on instinct to protect her cubs, the bear charged, chasing the man back towards the hiking trails. She’d barely taken him down to the ground when she, too, was felled. Cause of death: the well-aimed bullet of a retired policeman out doing some winter birding.
Lt. Pat Boniwell had hoped to snap a picture of a Yellow-rumped Warbler nibbling on some of the pale greenish-blue winter berries of the wax myrtle shrubs on his morning hike. Instead, a local newspaper reporter captured images of Boniwell and the rescued man posing near the large, forever-stilled body of the mother bear. It made the front page, and Boniwell’s friends affectionately referred to him as “One Shot” after that.
David Rucker Leeds, the man he saved, would later be referred to as Inmate #4221237.

* * *

When Lisa Bates’ daughter was murdered, she subsisted on the scraps of information from the police investigation. Once Leeds was caught, she consumed every detail of the court case. After the jury handed down a life sentence to Leeds without the possibility of parole, she gorged herself on the court transcripts and her own notes. She wasn’t attempting to fill the Amalie-shaped emptiness, knowing the futility of that. She was working to pinpoint the exact moment when she could go back and undo everything without causing too much other disruption.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ - "I throughly enjoyed this first book. I'm looking forward to the rest." -Crystal Lorraine Guess (Goodreads)

⭐⭐⭐ - "At only 26 pages this is a true Horrors d'oeuvres. Amalie is brutually murdered. Can Lisa rewrite the past and bring her back? Interesting idea but far too short for me." - Amber Clark (Goodreads, BookBub)