Page 8 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

Alone and desperate, I had called Val and begged her to come out of retirement, just for this one season. She showed up at the farmhouse an hour later, took one look at my hollow eyes, and agreed. Besides, she’d said as she patted my arm, she loved my uncle—and this land—far too much to say no.

“No,” Val says now. “You did not. You said you needed my help and that you wouldn’t ask if you weren’t desperate. You didn’t say a word about not getting other pickers.”

“I don’t have money to hire anyone,” I say. My uncle didn’t leave the farm in great financial shape—it’s been losing money for years, and Martin was using loans to make ends meet. “So, it’s just you and me. We’ll do as much as we can.”

She balloons her cheeks as she blows out a breath. “Fine, but in that case, the Thompson block’ll take us at least three.”

I drop my glass to the counter, nearly do a spit take. “Three weeks?”

“It’s not going to take three afternoons.”

“But…Uncle Martin said that once the trees turn, we only have six weeks max to get the pears down.”

She nods. “Otherwise, they’ll see to it themselves.”

I spare her a smile, but I don’t like where this conversation is going. “Right, so we need to go faster than that.”

She squints at me. “How fast do you think the two of us can pick fifty acres of fruit?”

“I mean, I’ve never picked pears before—”

Val snorts. “That much is clear.”

“But I do know there are seven blocks on the land. So, if we want to get most of it down, we’ll need to finish the Thompson block in a week. Less, ideally.”

“Not possible.”

I stare at her because this math isn’t mathing. “I’ll work as hard as I need to. I won’t sleep. I’ll eat in the trees. I’ll wake up before dawn. Keep picking in the dark with a headlamp.”

She shakes her head. “All of that is impossible.” I open my mouth to protest, but she puts up a hand. “Ali.”

She angles a slightly crooked index finger at a family portrait above the kitchen table, a shot from harvest decades ago. It features my grandmother, her third husband by her side, and my mom, already a blank-faced teenager. Between them, Martin holds up a pear with the mischievous grin he carried into adulthood. He’s the only one smiling, though. My mom, grandmother, and her husband struggle to stay upright in their picking bags—apron-like contraptions filled with pears from shoulders to knees.

“This work is harder than anything you can imagine,” Val says. “The damn bags weigh fifty pounds when they’re full. You have to scale a ladder dozens of times every day. You can’t wear gloves lest you damage the fruit. Your back will hurt so bad you’ll cry yourself to sleep. You physically can’t do it for more than a few hours a day. You’ll break yourself otherwise. You might even break as it is.”

Uncle Martin already told me all this. Once he understood the reasons I was resisting taking over the orchard—not because I didn’t want the land, but because I hated the idea that he wouldn’t be the one farming it—he asked me a million times if I’d still want to do it, even if it’s the hardest thing I could imagine.

I told him yes, over and over. It’s six weeks. I can handle six weeks of torture in exchange for the other forty-six I’ll live here.

Here, where every new leaf remembers the ones that came before. Where the fern green of summer always yields to white—powdery snow in the winter and blossoms in spring—proof that even change can be steady if you stick around long enough to see it. Where the wraparound porch and wicker chairs still bear the faint outline of where I used to sit, shoulder to shoulder with Uncle Martin, scraping up pasta sauce with forks, our arms aching from a day of thinning.

The porch boards remember where we sat, the orchard where we worked. I’ve left my mark here and this land has marked me, too.

Faced with Val’s skeptical frown, I cross my arms.

“I’ll figure it out,” I say.

“You know you’re not going to positive think your way out of this problem,” she says.

Years ago, I told Martin and Val that I was joining a change management firm that helps organizations navigate business transitions and build resilient teams by harnessing the power of positive thinking. Uncle Martin chuckled and told me it sounded like a perfect fit.

From the background, Val yelled, “What the fuck is the ‘power of positive thinking’?”

“I’m not trying to positive think my way out of anything,” I retort, even though that is at least partially what I’m doing. But only because it really can work. “I’m making a commitment. It will work because it has to. I might be the fifth Reid to farm this land, but I most certainly will not be the last.”

Val gives me a once-over, lips pressed like she’s torn between warmth and skepticism. “I like your conviction, girl.”

“Why does it sound like there’s a but coming?”