Page 53

Alan leaned back on his hands. “She’s happy here.”

“She is. She likes having both of you available whenever she wants you.”

“We like it too.”

Kate glanced at him. Her father was watching Penny, but there was something in his expression that made the words feel larger than the obvious meaning. “You miss her.”

“Of course we do. We miss you too.” Alan turned toward her. “Your mother and I knew what we were doing when we moved. We knew we were putting more distance between us, and I don’t regret buying this place. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things I wish I could have both ways.”

Kate understood that better than she would have a week ago. A week ago she would have told him it was simple. You chose where you lived and you made it work. Was it still that simple? She pulled a blade of grass apart between her fingers. “You could have stayed closer.”

“We could have. And then I think I would have spent the next ten years wondering why I’d retired only to carry on living exactly the same life.” He looked across the orchard. “I needed something that felt like a beginning, Kate. Your mother did too, although she was probably more sensible about the scale of that beginning than I was.”

Kate smiled. “She usually is.”

“She usually is.” Alan did not sound remotely bothered by the admission. “But we chose this together. We knew there would be things we didn’t understand, and there have been more of those than I expected. I’ve had days when I’ve wondered whether I was too old to start learning something this big from the beginning.”

Kate had suspected as much, but hearing him say it made her turn fully toward him. “Do you still think that?”

“No.” He took his time answering. “I think I’m old enough to know I don’t have to be good at something immediately for it to be worth doing. That is not the same thing.”

“That sounds surprisingly wise,” Kate said.

“I’ve had a lot of years to work up to it.”

She nudged his shoulder with hers, and Alan put an arm around her for a moment, pulling her against his side in the easy way he had when she was younger. Kate let herself lean there. She had come to Bear Creek partly because she had worried about them. Worried that the orchard was too much, that they had fallen in love with an idea rather than the reality of running it, that she would arrive and find her parents pretending everything was fine because admitting otherwise would make the move feel like a mistake.

Instead she had watched her father ask questions without embarrassment and her mother make the unfamiliar farmhouse feel lived in within days. They were tired sometimes. They got things wrong. They needed help. None of that meant they needed rescuing.

Penny came back carrying a yellow leaf almost as large as her hand. “Grandpa, this one is perfect.”

Alan released Kate and accepted the leaf solemnly. “It is a very good one.”

“It’s for you.”

“For me?”

“Because it’s yellow.”

Alan looked at Kate as if she might be able to explain the logic. She shook her head.

He tucked the leaf carefully into the breast pocket of his shirt anyway. “Thank you. I’ll keep it safe.”

Penny looked pleased and went off in search of another.

Kate watched her go. “You realize you’re going to have to keep that now.”

“I know. I’ve had experience with collectors.”

The back door of the farmhouse opened, and Janice appeared carrying a tray.

Kate got up immediately. “Mom, why didn’t you call us?”

“Because by the time one of you heard me, came back to the house and found out what I wanted, I could have carried it down here myself.”

Kate met her halfway and took the heavier side of the tray. There were mugs of coffee, sandwiches wrapped in paper and several pieces of the apple pie Janice had made from Eileen’s recipe. “Dad was just telling me he’s finally accepted that he doesn’t have to know everything about orchards immediately.”

Janice looked at her husband. “Did he use those exact words?”