Page 13 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

Logan tilts his head. “But it’s also a huge loss for you. You and Martin…I remember how close you two were.”

“Right,” I say, without letting myself remember it with him. I cough into my hand. “So, June mentioned a fire?”

He blinks but doesn’t question my abrupt non sequitur. “Lost both the shop and my apartment.”

“The shop?” I ask.

Another infinitesimal recalibration. “For woodworking.”

A breeze moves over us, fluttering the edge of my pin tuck dress against my knees.

“You’re a carpenter.”

“Family business and all.”

Not only did Logan stay in Apple Valley, but he became a carpenter.

A second breath-hijacking surprise.

How many times did we lie with our backs in the clover-pocked grass, gazing up at shifting clouds, and imagine our futures? How many times did we take turns on that tire swing, whispering about our dreams between swings of the creaking rope?

Up.

My mom would finally let me stay in one place for more than a year at a time. I could belong somewhere.

Down.

She’d let me stay in Apple Valley.

Up.

Logan would get an email back from a shared artists’ residence. He’d have paints and canvases in a sunny studio in a big city.

Down.

One day, he’d see his name on the wall of a gallery.

Unlike my dreams, this wasn’t supposed to be a fantasy. It was meant to be his future.

I search Logan’s face for a hint of regret, but his flat-lipped expression betrays nothing. It’s another subtle difference, that guardedness. Or maybe we’re just strangers now and I don’t know how to read him. Either way, I can’t ask what I want to know. “And you’re looking for a place to stay?”

He nods. “Apparently my insurance company is facing some backlog. The investigators keep hinting that the settlement process will be lengthy.”

“Right, good.” I kick myself. “Shit, I mean that’s terrible.”

But Logan, still unfazed, nods as if to say, Go on.

“Well, good because I might have a solution? I’m looking for pickers. I know I should have found someone a while ago, Val keeps saying so, but the truth is I don’t have much money to pay so I didn’t think it would be possible to—” I cut myself off, grimacing. I’m rambling. I ramble when I’m nervous. “Anyway, June mentioned you might appreciate having a different place to live. We could trade.”

On cue, Teddy lets out another shrill, high-pitched wail and June tries to soothe him with enthusiastic cooing noises. Logan has gone still, but for his fingers that open and close on one hand.

When he still doesn’t speak, I add, “You’d be welcome to stay at the house as long as you want. I’d just need your help in the orchard for a few hours a day. Early mornings and hard work, but…You get the idea. What do you think?”

Logan rubs at the back of his neck. There’s a shift in his neutral expression. The lightness in his eyes has darkened into something I can only describe as wary. It’s the same face he made when his dad unveiled a new logo decal on the family’s truck.

“Much more professional, don’t you think?” I heard his dad ask as they stood in front of the new words: Wright and Son. “Really instills a sense of continuity and trust.”

In front of me now, Logan swallows in the exact way he did when his dad patted him on the shoulder. There’s something strangely surreal about this moment. Although I can read the emotion with almost perfect clarity, fourteen years have erased all context to tell me what could be going on in his head. It’s like being able to hum the melody of a song without knowing any of the words.