Page 96 of Fall is Brewing

It’s been long enough for the hum of the refrigeration unit to grow louder, for the scent of apples and yeast to feel heavier in the air, for the quiet to stretch thin and uneasy.

Long enough that the silence stops feeling peaceful and starts feeling wrong.

"Willa?" I call toward the open warehouse door.

Nothing.

A knot pulls tight in my stomach.

I wipe my hands on a shop towel and head toward the cabin, taking the porch steps two at a time before letting myself inside.

"Willa?"

Still nothing.

She's upstairs. I know it before I even reach the landing.

The bedroom door is open. She stands with her back to me, perfectly still, one hand resting against the edge of my dresser. The gravity log lies forgotten beside her.

And in her hands… my mother's scrapbook. The one I just pulled out of the moving box at the back of my closet to look through. I completely forgot I left it out last night.

Every muscle in my body goes rigid. Not because she's looking through it. But because I know exactly which page it's open to.

For one impossible second, I consider backing away.

Pretending I never came upstairs. Pretending I can somehow put twenty years back into the box I'd kept them in.

But then Willa speaks, so quietly, so intensely sad, I almost don't hear her. “You… you knew me.”

It’s not a question, but rather a realization. She turns slowly, the photograph still trembling between her fingers.

Those bright green eyes I've spent weeks falling into search my face like they're looking for someone they don't recognize anymore.

"You knew who I was,” she repeats. “And you never said anything.”

I let out a slow breath.

"I did." How could I not? I knew I had played with the Hartley girl as a kid in those orchards. When we moved here and opened Calder Cider, I knew exactly who she was.

Silence stretches between until it feels almost physical, like melting taffy being pulled in webs between us.

She looks back down at the photograph. Then at me again. "Why didn't you tell me?"

The question lands harder than any accusation could have. Because I don't have a good answer.

Only an honest one. "I kept waiting for the right moment."

A sad little laugh escapes her. "And somehow there never was one?”

"I guess I didn’t think it mattered?” I say, rubbing the back of my neck. My pulse is thudding harder than it should be, like I'm a kid back in the orchard again, bracing for that apple to come flying at my nose.

My eyes drift to the scrapbook, and my chest tightens. "My mom kept everything," I say, softer now. "Every clipping, every photo, every little thing she thought might matter someday. You and I played in the orchard together that first autumn when we visited. And my mom kept teasing and telling my dad that you were my future wife. So when I told you that… you got mad and threw an apple at my face.”

Willa lowers her gaze to the photograph again. To the little girl with crooked braids. The little boy with a bandage across his nose.

I swallow, suddenly aware of how exposed I feel, like I've handed her something fragile and I'm just waiting to see if she'll drop it.

“Oh yeah,” she whispers and drags her fingers across the picture. “I do remember that. I broke your nose.”