“Our parents loved this land,” Bram says softly. “We always will, too. But they told us a long time ago that pack is where the heart is. And we’ll be back here as often as we need to be anyway.” His thumb sweeps across the back of my hand. “Now, about that deadline, I promise we’ll make it, so don’t you spend one second worrying about the bottles.”
I have to look at the ceiling for a second, because my eyes are full. I walked into this cottage carrying the bone-deep certainty that I don’t get to keep the good things. That love is something that happens to me by accident and then spoils. But wrapped in their warmth, I can finally see a bright future, full of love.
“Thanks,” I say. “I know we don’t have to solve all of it this morning. I think I just needed to hear that we were—”
“On the same page,” Reed finishes. “We are.”
I laugh, and a tear gets loose and slides sideways toward my hairline. Reed reaches over and thumbs it off my jaw before it gets there.
Then Ash’s eyes cut to Bram, Bram gives the smallest nod, and Reed sits back wearing a grin.
“Okay, no.” I look from one of them to the next. “You three just did a thing with your faces. What is happening.”
“So.” Ash leans forward, retrieves one of the mugs, and folds it into my hands. “We may have planned something for you today a few days back. And honestly, the timing could not be better, because it’s going toshowyou exactly how confident we are about that deadline.”
“Plannedwhat.”
Bram is openly smiling now. Reed bounces the couch cushion under me with the flat of his hand.
“The harvest festival,” Bram says. “Down in Honeycreek Hollow.”
40
Luna
The apple is the size of a soup bowl and it will not stop trying to roll off my lap.
“Support the base,” Reed says, for the third time, twisted around in the passenger seat to supervise me. “You’re holding it like a football.”
I tuck the towels in tighter around the five pounds of apple (Reed weighted it), red going gold at the shoulders, fat as a baby’s head, riding in my lap.
Bram found it by chance about an hour ago on a gnarled old tree at the orchard, claimed it was a sign from the heavens because, apparently, we’re entering some kind of exhibition contest at the festival.
Out the windshield, the sky is bright and blue, the morning haze finally cooked off. The road climbs and crests, and the whole of Honeycreek Hollow opens up in a green bowl below us, the creek running down the middle. Farther down, on the near bank, a cluster of white tents speckles the grass.
As we get closer, I smell frying dough and apples, then I see white tents in rows, bunting strung tent to tent. A stage at thefar end backed up against the hay bales, a banner sagging across the entrance that reads HONEYCREEK HOLLOW HARVEST FESTIVAL. A Ferris wheel, small and a little rickety, turning slow against all that blue. Fiddle music coming up thin and bright over the top of everything.
“Oh,” I say, and it comes out softer than I mean it to.
Ash twists fully around now, the half-smile already in place. “You’re about to find out why small festivals are the best festivals.”
Bram noses the truck into a field where a kid in a reflective vest is waving cars into rows. Then the doors are open, the noise comes fully in, and we’re out, walking, the apple heavy in my arms.
We make it maybe twenty feet.
“MILLER.” A barrel of a man in suspenders comes carving through the crowd and folds Bram into a hug that lifts him a clear inch off the grass. “You brought the whole family down. Would you look at this.”
“Hey, Cal.” Bram’s voice goes warm in a register I almost never get to hear. “This is Luna.”
Cal takes my free hand in both of his. “Knew these boys when they were knee-high and feral,” he tells me, dropping his voice. “You’ve got good taste.” Then he clocks the apple in my arms and his whole face falls open. He takes a step back. “Sweet merciful. What in God’s name is that?”
“It’s our ticket,” Bram says, and there’s a thing in his voice I’d call pride. “We’re walking out of this festival with a winner’s ribbon.”
Cal looks from the apple to Bram to me, and slowly takes his hat off, holding it over his heart. “God help the squash,” he says, and I wonder what he means by that.
We don’t get far before it happens again, and then again. A woman with flour to both elbows flags Ash down and pushesa fork of something into his mouth before he can so much as say hello, then stands there reading his face for the verdict. A pair of old men at the cider stand lift their cups when they see us and call out something about Hollow Gold. A boy of about eight plants himself square in Reed’s path, holds up two cupped hands, and announces, “I caught a frog.”
“You did not,” Reed says, and drops to his haunches on the spot. “Show me this frog.”
