Page 11 of Fall is Brewing

The sign in the distance.

Hartley & Sons Orchard.

It sits a couple miles down the road. A strip of land stretches between our orchards, a little no man’s land that has an easement that our lawyers have been back and forth with the Hartley’s lawyers regarding. The land is barely visible from here, but I know exactly where it is. I always have. Even before we moved back. Even before Calder Cider was more than an idea scribbled on a napkin and argued over at a kitchen table that doesn’t exist anymore.

My parents used to bring us to Orchard Falls every autumn for years.

We’d pile into the car with thermoses of coffee and plans that never quite stuck, because once we’d hit Orchard Falls, everything slowed down. Apples. Cider. Pie. My mom laughing when my dad pretended he knew how fermentation worked.

Back then, Hartley & Sons was the orchard where we went to pick apples and have homemade donuts and hot cider out of a wood shed. Orchard Falls was where autumn felt real.

I didn’t know Hartley & Sons would become my competition.

I didn’t know this town would feel like a memory before it ever felt like home.

And I certainly didn’t know Willa would hate me as much as she did for simply following my dreams.

I touch my fingers to the bridge of my nose where there’s just the slightest bump and curve from when it broke when I was a kid and smile. The wind kicks up, carrying the faint scent of apples and leaves, and I square my shoulders, shaking off the ghost of a memory. Ever since breaking my nose years ago, I barely have any sense of smell left. Damn deviated septum.

Calder Cider isn’t about nostalgia. This is now about survival. And whether our orchard earns its place here—or proves we never should’ve come back at all. Proves if my brothers and I can’t get our heads out of our asses long enough to stick to one single mission statement.

The crunch of tires on gravel pulls me out of my head but I don’t turn right away. I already know who it is.

Evan steps out of the truck with a coffee in one hand and an iPad in the other, jacket zipped to his throat like the air personally offended him. He’s been up longer than I have—always is. Numbers don’t sleep, and neither does my oldest brother.

“You’re early,” he says, scanning the barrels before he even looks at me.

“Or you’re late,” I counter.

He snorts because we both know he’s never late to anything. He sets the coffee on a barrel and finally meets my gaze. “We need to talk.”

Of course we do. There’s always something to talk about.

He flips the iPad open, thumb already smudging the corner. “The competition list is out. We’re up against more entries than last year. And Hartley & Sons is favored.”

I don’t react. Not outwardly.

“That’s not surprising, they always are,” I say.

“That’s the point,” Evan replies. “We’re still the new guys. One bad showing and we’re a novelty.”

“A novelty that sells out every weekend,” I remind him.

“Until it doesn’t,” he says quietly. “Exposure cuts both ways.”

“Always the defeatist,” I mutter.

“Plus,” he continues, ignoring me, “there’s lots of other entries of cider from microbreweries around the area. This region is rife with microbreweries,” he adds with a sneer, as if we, ourselves, aren’t exactly like those other guys.

I exhale through my nose. “You’re worrying too much.”

“And you’re not worrying enough,” he shoots back.

Before I can respond, another set of footsteps announces itself—faster, less careful.

Jace barrels toward us grinning, hoodie half-zipped, energy already too big for the morning. “Well, if it isn’t one half of Orchard Falls’s newest power couple.”

I glare at him, not even sure what his joke means yet... but with Jace, it most certainly has to do with a woman. “Whatever you’re hinting at, don’t start.”