We all just waited in awkward silence for Mercer to call me a liar and a fraud.
It wasn’t anything I didn’t already know anyway.
two
MARK
Wow.
Shereallydidn’t remember me.
I forced my face to do something that could hopefully pass for a smile and said, “Welcome home, Candace.”
She’d been Candy back in high school. Maybe she’d forgotten her own name right along with mine.
She was trying to play it off and be polite, but she was a shit liar. Her smile looked like a photograph of a smile, copied and pasted onto her face, instead of the real deal.
There was a part of me who acknowledged that, yes, I did look different now, and we’d never really run in the same circles. But our graduating class had less than one hundred people.
Plus there had been that thing that one time.
Anyway.
Of course, I rememberedher. Candace Judd had been the valedictorian of our class and the president of a handful of clubs. She’d organized events and led volunteer work. And if that hadn’t been enough, she’d beenpopular and well-liked among her peers. Candy hadn’t been head cheerleader, but she had run track and cross-country and been both homecoming and prom queen.
The part of me that had been a scrawny seventeen-year-old nerd took Candace’s convenient memory loss as my due, but it still stung a little. Like a thorn I hadn’t expected while pulling weeds.
Amy raised her voice over her daughter’s well-meaning rambling. “Mercer, why don’t you stay and have dinner with us? I have chicken and dumplings in the slow cooker.”
“Thank you, but I should get back to work. I’m finishing up a few things and then heading home.”
Plus, I’d seen Joan stalking along the path between the orchard and the house withquitethe facial expression. Someone needed to protect the farm equipment from her obvious wrath.
“I’ll see y’all tomorrow,” I said with a wave and backed away.
Candace took a tiny step forward, like she might stop me. “Bye, Mark. It was good to meet—to see you!” She fought her wince, but I caught it.
Lord, she was trying hard. Bless her heart.
I smiled—authentically this time—and nodded.
I watched long enough to see Brady roll his eyes and wrap his arm around Candace, directing her toward the front porch. He sighed out, “God, you’re hopeless,” and then threw me a wave over his shoulder.
Climbing back inside my truck, I felt a little twist of guilt when I shifted into drive. I didn’t actually have any work left. It was ten after five, and I had been on my way out when Amy flagged me down.
I kind of wished I’d kept on driving.
Despite her unintentional dig, it was good to see Candace back in Kirby Falls. Her parents never passed up an opportunity to talk about her—her life in New York City, her job, how amazing she was, or how proud they were of her. I was happy for them to have her back.
Nick and Amy Judd were good people. In the three years I’d been working for them, they’d always treated me like one of the family. I got invited to dinnersand cookouts and birthday celebrations and holidays regularly. I had a good friend in Brady Judd and a good co-worker in Joan. She was quieter and less intentional in her friendship, but it was there. I knew I could count on her for damn near anything. And the Judds had never once made me feel like the hometown tragedy I was. They ignored the gossip and nosy neighbors. They were the closest thing I had to a family.
I moved to Kirby Falls in middle school, during my seventh-grade year. I’d already been a bit of an outcast because I was new. Most of my classmates had known each other since kindergarten. A brand-new student, much less a midyear transplant, was pretty rare around these parts. Add in the fact that my homelife looked a lot different than most of my peers’, and you had a recipe for a loner in the making.
My neighbors had been the first folks to welcome me to North Carolina. The Prices were a charitable bunch. Reverend Price was the preacher at Kirby Falls Baptist Church, and his wife, Peggy, was generous and involved. Their only daughter, Hannah, had been in my grade at school and was the first person to offer me friendship. I’d held on tight and given her my undying devotion as a result. Even now, after all that had happened, I wasn’t sure if I regretted it or not.
I rolled the window up on the truck and let the air-conditioning cool me down. The summer months were a killer down south, and this week made it feel like autumn was a ways off and not right around the corner.
The orchard would be opening this weekend for the season. Judd’s Orchard was only open to tourists and visitors from mid-August through November 1. Thursday through Sunday, we’d welcome tourists onto the farm. They’d be eager to pick early-ripening apples and sample the items from the refreshment stand. Amy worked behind the counter, handling the apple slushies and the apple cider doughnuts and the apple slices with caramel. Brady and his dad, Nick, rotated between stations in the Apple House—either selling tickets, passing out buckets for the u-pick customers, and manning the merchandise counter in the front, or grading and washing the apples used for pressing in the back. I was mostly in the fields with Joan, but I pitched in where needed. I helped pick and prepare the produce we sold locally, and we all did our part to cover the weekly seasonal farmers’ market and scheduled Kirby Falls events.
