Page 17 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

Although voicing this feels so at odds with our surroundings—the sparrows rustling in overhead branches, a chirr of crickets accelerating as the sun climbs, the dusty smell of sunbaked bark on a row of trees my grandmother planted when she was a teenager. How could a place this beautiful—this steady—possibly have something unseen going wrong?

“What diseases turn pears white?” Logan asks.

“Powdery mildew. Maybe pear rust. It could also be something else, something new. Val is always saying—You remember her?”

“No one could forget Val. Your aunt, right?”

I nod. “Not biologically, but yeah. Val was my uncle’s forewoman, her dad was my grandfather’s foreman. She knows this land just as well as anyone with the name Reid. Better, actually. Anyway, Val’s always reminding me that the valley is constantly turning up new diseases. Climate change and all.”

Logan’s lips firm and he lifts a low-hanging branch for me to pass under. As I do, I’m bathed in his clean scent, the proximity of his features. His probing eyes. Strong jaw. Barrel-wide chest. It’s unfair how attractive he’s gotten in the last fourteen years. No one should be allowed to age this well.

“Why does ‘some new disease brought to us by climate change’ still sound like the beginning of that science fiction movie?” he asks.

I lift a shoulder. “Nah. If one of America’s crops ends up screwing over humanity, my money’s on corn or soybeans.”

“Not a fan of commodity farming, then?”

I snort. “ ‘Farming’ isn’t the right word for what they do. It’s basically just data entry with dirt.”

Logan chuckles and I grin back at him, but as I turn, I nearly run headlong into the barn. My entire body freezes as pleasant orchard rhythms are choked by memories.

Moving through the broken door, hanging loose on its hinges. The dark shadows resolving to hay bales as my eyes adjusted. A squeak, and the clicking of paws as a furry body, streaked with white, scuttled across weather-stained floorboards. And then—

I swallow, fighting to erase the images along with whatever is showing on my face.

This story isn’t serving you, I remind myself like I’m a small-team leader resisting a digital transformation initiative. Abruptly, I turn to Logan.

But he’s not looking at me.

He’s staring at the barn, too.

His eyes have gone hard, big hands limp by his sides. Is it because the barn looks so different now? We’ve had some hard weather since that summer, and my uncle didn’t have the funds to keep up on repairs.

But no. Logan’s expression is deeper than that. Like he’s seen a ghost. A ghost that just hit him in the face with a folding chair.

Chapter Four

“Logan?” I ask tentatively. “Did something—Is everything all right?”

Logan scrubs a hand against his beard, moves it to massage the back of his neck. “Not exactly.”

I’m officially too tempted not to ask. “Is there something wrong with the barn?”

Nails still raking, he glances at me as though deciding something, then blows out a long breath. “You remember my parents built it, right?”

“Of course. And you helped.”

“Barely. I had only started learning at that point. That summer we were here, it’s…” He shakes his head, clearing it. “My family built that barn fourteen years ago, and then my mom was gone. The last time I saw her was the day we finished.”

My hand flies up to my mouth before I have the good sense to drop it. Holy shit. I have no idea what I was expecting him to say, but this was certainly not it. “She disappeared?”

“She left,” he corrects.

“What happened?” I whisper.

I wonder if Logan will answer. His eyes are hard, his expression closed off in a way I never saw when we were kids. But then he says, “I don’t know. Maybe my dad did but…Well, he was never much good at talking about hard things and he only got worse about that once she left. And my brothers were too young. They barely remember her at this point, let alone know her reasons. So, I never found out.”

“I’m so sorry.” Suddenly my own barn-related trauma feels mild. “That’s awful.”