Page 75 of Fall is Brewing

Another plate passes between us. This time his fingertips brush mine and linger just long enough to make my breath forget itself.

From the living room, Jace calls, “If you two are kissing in there, please be advised I left my cider on the counter and I’m coming in to grab it!”

I jerk back so fast I nearly drop the plate

Brooks closes his eyes. “I’m going to murder him.”

I wander back toward the sideboard while he pours more cider, drawn again to the old photograph. The three boys beneath the trees. Their parents laughing on the truck. The sunlit rows behind them.

Hartley & Sons rows, apparently.

My rows.

A strange prickle moves through me.

Not memory exactly. More like the feeling of walking into a room and forgetting why you came in. Something familiar buried too deep to surface.

When I look over, Brooks is watching me with an expression I can’t read. Something tugs again. A flash of red apple skin. A boy’s shout. The sharp, panicked sting of trouble.

Then, the memory is gone.

“What?” Brooks asks.

“I don’t know.” I shake my head, letting my hand fall from the frame. “It feels like I … like I can almost remember you. This little boy version of you, I mean.” I brush my fingers over the glass frame.

His gaze holds mine for a long moment. “Maybe you will.”

The words settle strangely. Softly. Like a seed pressed into soil.

“Did we ever meet when you visited?”

Brooks opens his mouth to answer me when from the living room, Jace shouts. “Please tell me someone remembered to make dessert!”

“Anything but apples,” Evan groans.

The moment breaks and Brooks chuckles, shaking his head. “I have peach cobbler and ice cream,” he says.

I laugh as Brooks steps around me to pull a dish out of the refrigerator. As he spoons peach cobber into the bowls, my eyes drift back to the photograph one last time.

Three boys.

Apple trees.

And a life that brushed against mine years ago without leaving a name behind.

CHAPTER 16

Brooks

The next morning, I hand Willa the delivery clipboard instead of an apron.

She looks down at it, then back up at me. “Is this a trick?”

“Usually you say good morning first.”

“Usually people don’t hand me suspicious office supplies before coffee.”

With a smile I don’t try to fight, I hand her the Calder Cider to-go mug that was behind my back, hot and black, just how she likes it.