Page 96 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

I blink as my stomach shifts uncomfortably. I hadn’t thought Martin and Lydia spoke again after her letter. It seemed so final and I didn’t see any evidence they were in touch before he died. She certainly didn’t come to the funeral.

But now she’s saying they talked again? And she never reached out to her sons.

I press a shoulder to Logan’s, just in case he’s having these thoughts, too.

“No,” I say, “we’re wondering if there’s anything you can tell us that you didn’t say in the interview. The clips were quite vague.”

Without answering, Lydia uncertainly twirls a hair tie around her wrist.

“Whatever it is,” I push, “we won’t be surprised. Over the last few weeks, we’ve probably seen stranger.”

“Oh? Even…even with Martin gone?”

“Yes? What does that have to do with it?”

She frowns at her glass. “Maybe nothing, I don’t know. To answer your question, it was…subtle. Some of it so subtle that I don’t think Martin even noticed it until I pointed it out. Maybe because he’d lived on that land all his life and he just…Well, he was a very accepting person.”

My body tenses at the compliment. Martin’s unequivocal acceptance of me—all parts of me—used to be my favorite thing about him. Is Lydia about to sour that, too?

She’s still talking. “Some of it seemed undeniable. Trees that would bend without any wind. Sudden shifts in the temperature. Unexplained flowers.”

“The forget-me-nots,” I say.

She nods, and there’s so much weight to the gesture I think she might be wondering how much we know. Or maybe she’s assuming Martin spilled his secrets before the end. This thought gives me another spike of resentment. He should have told me what he knew.

“You say this is all happening again now?” she asks. “Even after he died?”

“It hasn’t been exactly the same,” I tell her. “But, yes, something supernatural is happening with the land. You’re saying you believed Martin was the source of it?”

“He never agreed. But if he’s gone and the magic is still there, then…I guess I was wrong after all.”

My stomach drops with the edge of disappointment, and I’m not sure how to continue.

Logan, though, does seem to know because his expression is steady as he says, “Is the orchard’s magic the reason you left?”

Her face snaps up. “How do you know that?”

This reaction is enough to make me straighten. “How, exactly, did that work?”

Lydia’s lips firm as she considers, then spreads her hands out on the table, pressing her palms and splaying her fingers. “I…it’s complicated. Give me a moment to think about how to explain.” She frowns like we’re looking at her impatiently. Maybe we are. “Not because I haven’t thought about it. It’s just that my understanding of what happened has changed over time and if you’d walked in that door a year ago or five years ago I would have said something different. I want to make sure this answer is the best I have to give.”

“I don’t need your best explanation,” Logan says. “I only want the true one.”

And even though he’s holding his face neutrally, I can see the uncertainty there, the significance in the sweep of his mouth and the set of his eyebrows. Despite what he said earlier, it’s clear Logan is not only asking this question because of the pears. At this point, I don’t think it’s about Lydia, either. After that conversation with Mason, I think he might be asking a question even closer to home.

I steady my leg against his knee. He shifts slightly, leaning into me.

“The truth of it,” Lydia says, and draws in a steeling breath, “is that I was unhappy for many years. I got pregnant right before I graduated from high school, and then your father and I got married before I started showing. I wasn’t ready to be a mother, not in the way people said I would be. I didn’t know how to say no to the life that was already building up around me.”

Logan swallows and I press my knee harder to his, like I can absorb some of this blow for him. Like I can shield him from the pain this woman has inflicted, and all the pain she’s about to inflict.

“Your father…he wouldn’t have admitted it, but he wasn’t happy, either. He was young, too. Way too young for that life. Only his way of dealing with that was by disappearing. Sometimes into the garage or our workshop or, later, down to some bar. Sometimes farther. He never wanted to talk about anything, not what I was feeling and certainly not what he was. He’d only try to outrun it.

“I was the one who stayed,” she continues, bravely meeting Logan’s eyes. “For years, I stayed even though he was always leaving me. Then, we built the barn on Martin’s orchard and I…Well, I don’t know how much he told you already.”

“We don’t know exactly what happened between you,” I say, and I can feel my body bracing itself, not just for Logan but also for me, and the image of my uncle.

The betrayal that maybe shouldn’t feel personal but still does.