Page 111 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

I’m about to turn away when I see Blake look up, his gaze meeting mine across the rows of golden flowers. Liv dusts off her hands and turns to help a customer.

For a heartbeat, we stand like that—neither hostile nor tender.

I nod once.

He nods back.

And then I walk away.

I leave the hardest conversation for last.

Attempting to ease us into it, I call Mom on Sunday five minutes before one o’clock. I know she’ll be free, expecting me, and maybe even softened by predictability. Maybe that’ll help me get through this without breaking down.

And then I remember that’s not the point.

With a stiff quilt shawled around my shoulders, I sip at a half-finished cup of tea to stave off the October chill and dial her number. Although it’s her preference, I don’t use a video call. This conversation will already be difficult. The thought of her composed, expressionless face is too much.

“Ali?” she answers after a few rings. “This is a surprise.”

So much for easing us in. “Hey, Mom.”

The words land flat. “I hope nothing is wrong.”

I take a bite of cookie from the tin on my lap and try to consider my response.

Is something wrong?

Emphatically yes.

But also. A curl of steam rises from my mug, smelling of cardamom. The hillside is brightening under midday sun, warming the grass and burning the trees in rust and copper. Even though I might not have much more time in this beautiful, perfect place, right now the answer is also no.

“I wanted to talk to you about something,” I say instead of answering.

A brief pause. Then Mom says, “Go ahead.”

“I haven’t been fully honest with you about how I feel about some things,” I say, my practiced beginning. As with my uncle, I have a speech prepared. This time, I need it. “But hiding all that has been making everything worse. So, I want to tell you the truth.”

“I see,” Mom says neutrally.

Every instinct in me screams to stop.

I’m six, walking through the door with a skinned knee and there’s confusion in her eyes. I’m sixteen, on the phone begging her not to move us to Alaska, and I hear only a click on the other end. Eighteen, clutching a diploma in a borrowed city while she blinked, unsure why I’d be crying on a special day.

And then, through the static, I’m with Logan. Sitting in his truck, his eyes on mine. I believe you could, too. If you decided to.

I stand. Shuck off the blanket. Abandon my notes and move down the porch steps. Grass presses cold against my bare toes, still slick from the sprinklers. Wind coils low through the tree trunks, rattling leaves in uneven gusts.

And I ride the wave.

“I’m so angry with you,” I say.

Before she can respond or I can talk myself out of continuing, I press on. “I spent my entire childhood uprooted. Dragged from city to city, stranger to stranger. I stopped making friends because I always knew they were temporary. I never went to prom. Never had a homecoming. I graduated surrounded by people who didn’t know my name. And when I cried, you looked at me like you couldn’t understand why. I was engaged for more than a year and when it ended, when I told you what happened, all you could ask was when I was going to leave. You could never see how important this place was to me, because you can’t see the things that make me me.”

Another gust of wind ripples through the trees, scattering brittle leaves across the strips of bare earth at their bases.

“That’s what hurts most,” I continue. “Not that we moved around or that you wouldn’t tell me why, but that whenever I tried to tell you how I felt, you shut down. You rejected the parts of me that are most deeply me.”

The wind picks up, hard enough to make the pears sway. A droplet of rain finds the earth, darkening the spot to black.