Page 30 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

“It’s not long COVID, is it?” Midge Pritchard said in a hushed whisper after she’d cornered me by the parsnips.

I told her Martin was perfectly healthy, which was true at the time. When I asked Val about it later, she coughed out something that sounded distinctly like busybody.

I wrote it off, figuring if Val wasn’t worried, I shouldn’t be, either.

What I’ve come to learn is that Val doesn’t tell me her concerns.

By the following year, my uncle’s entries take another turn. Problems of biology turn to the problems of finance that Liv started sorting through when we moved onto the farm.

December 10, 2022

07:30—Heavy sky. Air thick, like it knows something I don’t.

9:40—Moths again. I fear I’ll never be rid of the fluttering freeloaders.

14:10—Accountant came by. Will need another loan to replace the tractor. I smiled like it was fine.

Visitors—The fellow with the briefcase doesn’t count.

My mind flicks to the stack of ledgers and bills in the office, where the door has been firmly shut since Liv left. She was the one with the head for the numbers, not me. And I haven’t had the bandwidth to pry open that door yet.

Best not to think about that right now.

Instead, I keep reading.

It’s past midnight when I set down my last journal. These pages document more problems than I’d thought possible, but I haven’t found a single mention of white pears.

“Anything?” I ask Val. Logan is still hunched over a set of pages, but she’s staring into the empty fireplace.

She startles. “You done?”

I nod and she heaves off the couch to join me at the table. By my side, Val is quiet as she thumbs through a span of pages from my journals, lingering on some of the later ones. Then the last one. Uncle Martin stopped taking notes last November, shortly before he decided to stop chemo.

Her thumb rubs over the words Visitors—None.

“I didn’t realize he was so lonely,” I say quietly.

She swallows. “Feels worse than when we were living it. Reading it back-to-back.”

“What happened?” I ask. When I was a kid, there was always a steady stream of friends and neighbors stopping by for tea or rhubarb wine. “Did he have a falling-out with a friend or something?”

Val sighs heavily. “Nothing like that. He sequestered himself up here. Refused to go into town. Stopped seeing any of the old crew. It got worse and worse, until eventually he was damn well convinced it was happening to him, not because of him.” She purses her lips, looking like maybe she’s just said something she shouldn’t have. “Doesn’t matter now, anyway.”

As painful as all this is for me, I know it’s a thousand times worse for her. So, I let that topic drop. “Things were bad for longer than I realized. I don’t remember the farm having problems like this when I was a kid.”

“For what it’s worth,” Logan says, looking up from his open pages, “the entries I’ve been reading weren’t nearly that bad. Martin is mostly reporting full trees, some unusual flowers. Hardly any pests, and most of them benign. Although it does get worse toward the end.”

“When exactly?” I ask.

Val frowns. “Why’s it matter?”

“I know it’s a long shot,” I say as Logan flips through his pages, skipping around by weeks, then months, “but we haven’t found any mention of white pears, so maybe we need to pivot. Maybe if we can figure out what went wrong for my uncle, the source of it, we can also figure out what’s going wrong for me.”

“Don’t see how they’re related,” Val grumbles.

“You’re the one who said it’s all connected,” I argue. “That the soil is unusual and that encourages unusual flora and fauna.”

Her jaw flexes.