Page 93 of Thirst For Me
“Interesting. How the hell did I not know this path is here?”
“I guess you never asked.” I give him an unimpressed look and he shrugs. “It wouldn’t be much of a secret if I told everyone.”
“Who uses it?”
“We are. Right now.”
“Seriously, though. What’s the deal? You have dueling orchards, right next to one another, and you both have a cider business. And you hardly speak to one another. How does that even happen?”
“Well, the answer to that is both complicated and simple. Kind of depends how you look at it. Our families have been fighting over this orchard for decades, and at some point in history, they split it into two, literally, by putting a fence down the middle. That’s the complicated part. It started way back, with my grandpa Tommy’s father. He and June’s father were friends, as I mentioned, but became enemies. Legend tells it that they fought over a girl.” Mason glances at me. “Maybe that’s the simple part.”
“Agirl? You’re telling me ... there was a freaking love triangle? And now there’s a fence down the middle of the orchard?”
“So the story goes.”
“Okay, I really, really need this story.”
“Wish I could tell you, but that’s all I know. Kind of hard to get the story when no one who was there is alive anymore to talk about it.”
I consider that. “Oh.”
“It just becomes a rumor. An anecdote.”
“Bummer.”
“What’s really interesting,” he says alluringly, “is how history has a way of repeating itself. Rumor has it ... that my grandpa and June were once an item, too.”
“No!”
“Again, just a rumor. But Tommy was friends with June’s former husband, originally, and I guess they fought over her or something. I’m not exactly sure how it went down. Because again, no one talks about it.”
“And what happened?”
“Well, I guess my grandpa lost.”
“And then ... he married your grandma?”
“Guess so.”
“And she . . .”
“Passed away about fifteen years ago.”
“I’m sorry. What happened to June’s husband?”
“They divorced, years ago. Never seemed like the best match anyway.”
“Why?”
“Well, she runs her family’s alcohol company and he had a real drinking problem. Pretty easy math on that. I hear he moved to the mainland, somewhere way up north.”
“And they never had children?”
“Nope. Her sisters had kids, some of them grew up here, even had kids here. I imagine she’s still in touch with them, even though they’ve all moved away now. Lee is the only one who stayed. He’smanaged the orchard for June for years, but they’ve had to hire on every other position, including cider master.”
“Huh. You’d think that June, and Lee, would be even more interested in knowing their neighbors, getting along and maybe even supporting each other, since their whole family is gone.”
“You’d think.”
