Page 5 of Apple of My Eye

She yawned, breaking the moment. “Sorry.”

I pulled back and studied her. Eyes heavy-lidded, the alcohol and exhaustion finally caught up to her.

“Get some sleep, sweetheart.” It took everything I had to lay her down, setting her head on a rose-colored pillow.

She turned toward the back of the couch and nestled in deeper, mumbling as she drifted off. “Apples… harvest… too many to pick… so tired… need… boxes…”

For some time, I sat there, memorizing her sleeping face, unguarded in the lamp’s glow. Who knew when I’d get to see her like that again?

For now, that’d have to be enough.

Chapter Two

Daisy Wylde

Despite a slight headache,I woke my sisters early to start picking. I needed to keep busy too, because I’d rather forget that I’d practically thrown myself at Knox last night. Blame the alcohol, blame him for playing the hero, but, sober today, a man in my life was the last thing I needed—no matter how much I enjoyed looking at him.

Ivy called me a slave driver. Sage and Poppy complained of hunger. But somehow, by mid-morning, we’d gotten down one row of trees. My shoulders screamed for attention. I took off my straw hat and wiped my brow on my forearm. The warm fall day had me sweating something awful, but there was work to be done.

The apples filled the trees more than before Mom and Dad died. None of us imagined things could turn around, not after a few lean seasons of learning what the hell we were doing. The orchard had been Dad’s dream, and if not for his harvest journals as our bible, we would have been screwed.

Honeycrisp was my favorite, but we had two other varieties as well, hearty enough that they withstood the Montanawinters—Zelstar and McIntosh. I’d deciphered Dad’s careful notes in that cramped handwriting of his, dated and cross-referenced with what worked and what didn’t, like the field was his lab and he was a scientist. We’d followed those notes to the letter, a roadmap back to something we’d almost lost, and now the apple trees were alive and well, telling us it had worked.

Couldn’t be more grateful, while also staring at two acres of trees and more apples than four women and two hired hands could get off the branches before they started softening and dropping.

As loyal as the season, Henry and Carl had worked this orchard every fall for our father since before I could remember. They showed up today, the steadiest help we could have ever asked for. But they were both in their sixties now, and with the warm harvest conditions this year, I could already tell it was going to get the better of us all. We needed to move faster, work longer, and get as much fruit picked as we could before it turned.

“I’m going to fall and break a rib,” Poppy announced from atop the ladder in the tree where I was working below.

“You’re so dramatic,” Sage called back from the tree beside us. “I took time off both my jobs to be here. We’re all pitching in.”

“Just be careful,” I warned.

“I’m always careful, except when I’m not.” Poppy would be the first and only of us to graduate college. I was so proud of her. Would’ve pleased our parents to see her get that diploma.

“You have a test you were supposed to be studying for,” I said. “Wish you hadn’t skipped class.”

“I’m not studying while you’re all out here killing yourselves for this. Besides, I’m acing my classes. Nothing to worry about.” She climbed down the ladder and appeared beside me, strawberry-blonde hair escaping in every direction from her braid. A smear of apple pulp appeared across her cheek, and she wore one of Dad’s old blue bandanas around her neck, soaked with sweat.

Ivy straightened from emptying her bag in the bin the next tree over and pressed her fists into the small of her back. “I should head back to town soon. I just hired Avery last week, but she’s still a teenager. She can handle the morning, but not a full day alone yet.” She cast me a glance with an apology in it.

“We all have time backing up. I’ve got five farrier calls I rescheduled for later this week already. We’ll do what we can today. Tomorrow, I’ll figure out how to get more help here to pick,” I said.

Nobody argued. That was just the shape of us—four sisters running at capacity in different directions, always circling back to this orchard, to our family home, like it was the center of everything, whether or not we liked it.

There were migrant workers in the area, and plenty of out-of-work cowboys drifting through we could hire, but with just the four of us on this property, I was careful about who I trusted.

I kept a mental note of unfamiliar vehicles I notice passing by on the county road. Had done it for years, longer than I'd consciously realized. I'd inherited the habit from Dad without meaning to. He loved keeping meticulous records of cars coming and doing.

This season, though… I might have to face reality and let some strangers in.

We worked in comfortable silence until we reached the end of the row closest to the house.

“Let’s take a break.” Sage held up her water jug, and we all stopped gratefully and gathered at the fence. I perched on the top rail and tipped my head back, drinking deeply.

“Remember the year Dad made us pick through that storm?” Poppy doused her bandana and wrung it around her neck again. “How cold it was?”

“Yep. That harvest was late. Snow was coming early. ‘Have to pick ’em all before the frost,’” Ivy mocked Dad, laughing. “And Mom brought hot chocolate out at six in the morning. He’d been at it all night.”