Page 9 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

“But picking fruit has a way of breaking resolutions. And I don’t think you’re facing facts.”

I feel slightly unsteady, like the kitchen floor is seesawing, an airplane jostling in turbulence. “I can face facts.”

“Good. Fact is you need three pickers.”

My stomach washes. I was supposed to have three pickers, but now I have a tan line on my ring finger, and I have Val.

“I don’t have enough money,” I say, pointedly avoiding a glance toward the pile of bills that has been accumulating on the kitchen counter.

Val drains her glass and yanks her phone out of her back pocket. “I have to go, chicken. Poker night.”

“But Val—”

“We’ll find someone else,” she says over her shoulder because she’s already plowing toward the door. “Someone you don’t need to pay so much. We’ll call in a favor. Or maybe there’s some kid that needs work for the summer.”

“But who?” I ask, scrambling to catch up as she forges across the grass. “You said yourself it’s hard work. It’s not something a kid can do for pocket money, and even if we do find someone like that, there’s no guarantee they won’t quit on us and leave halfway through the season.”

Val pauses her clomping steps, a funny look in her eyes. “Is that what you’re really worried about? Getting left?”

An image of the barn strobes through my memory. An open door, hanging loose on its hinges. The scuttle of a black-furred body across the weather-stained floorboards. Hay bales—

I shove the thoughts away. “I can handle it. We can handle it. Together.”

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” she retorts as she ducks under a branch and beeps her key fob. “Sorry to be blunt about it, but Martin—god love him—left you with more debts than fruit trees. So, if you want to save this farm, you’ll find another picker instead of clinging to that irrational—”

Val stumbles. A root I hadn’t noticed a second ago, one that should never have been above the surface to begin with, seems to have materialized in front of her.

Her ankle buckles.

I’m already rushing toward her as she slams against the ground. And howls with pain.

Chapter Two

After four hours, two sets of X-rays, and a chunky new boot, the hospital staff cede to Val’s demands to be discharged. The good news is her ankle is sprained—not broken—and the doctor expects her to have the boot off in two weeks. My aunt interprets this to mean she’ll be ready for harvest when it starts in four. (When the doctor leaves, I ask her who is “positive thinking” now. With a withering stare, she retorts that this will be her sixty-first year on earth and forty-seventh on a tree ladder. No kid with a stethoscope will tell her to stay off it.)

The better news (according to Val) is that the near miss was the final push I needed to try to find a third picker. As she says, we’re hanging on by a thread and I don’t need another sprained ankle—mine or hers—tipping my farm into the final stages of ruin.

So that’s why, the following Saturday morning, I’m forging through flapping white tents at the Apple Valley farmer’s market, beelining past baskets of heirloom tomatoes and sweet corn stacked in crates. After a brief detour to buy myself a maple-pecan donut, I locate my destination. For some reason the rickety old sign is missing—the one promising Loca Apples and Icy Cold Bev. Fortunately, the cheerful red wagon behind an A-frame menu board is distinctive enough.

Of course, I’m not here for the hard cider. I’m here for the cider maker’s nephew.

He’s the third (and last) person on the list Val gave me from her bed a few nights ago, where she was propped up with her boot elevated and a cigar she definitely shouldn’t have been smoking seesawing across her face. Personally, though, I’m most hopeful about this one. I’ve only met the guy once, but he’s so freakishly tall I bet he makes ladders feel insecure. Even better, his aunt, June, told Val he’s taking the year off before starting college, which means he might be interested in some pocket money in exchange for a month or so of extremely hard work.

I’m still licking sugar glaze off my fingertips when I reach the red wagon’s open window. On the ground by the wheel, a new wood sign sits nearly finished, rimmed with tools and declaring that this is Broken Hart’s Cider Co. It’s pretty—certainly a big upgrade to the one with missing letters.

“Hello?” I say as I ball up sticky paper and peer past empty cider bottles being used as vases.

“Be there in a sec!” a high-pitched voice calls from inside.

A moment later, a short woman with fair skin flushed to pink and laugh lines around her eyes materializes in front of me, a tiny baby slung across her front.

“Ali!” she says like we’re old friends, though we’ve met only a couple of times.

“Hey there,” I say. “It’s June, right?”

“You’ve got it,” June says warmly. “June Hart. And this is Teddy, short for Theodore. You’re fast—most new folks don’t pick up names that quick.”

She tips her temple to the top of her baby’s head, and smiles in a way that draws one from me right back. She has the same kind of infectious familiarity with perfect strangers that Liv always had. Has.