Page 13 of Cherry Tree Ranch

I smile and accidentally fling water into Emery’s face as I shake my hands dry. “Oops, sorry,” I laugh.

“You know what, Dahlia—” Her nostrils flare.

“Stop,” Mom interrupts in a measured tone before I can tell Emery how selfish and spoiled she is.

“Sorry, Mom,” I say, ashamed. “Please be done for the day. I’ll finish up.”

“I do need to rest.” She sighs and tosses Emery a towel from Grandma’s embroidered collection.

Emery wipes her hands on it and turns to leave. “I’m going out,” she says. At the door she delivers one last blow. “I don’t understand why you think this ranch is so great, Dahlia. Grandpa didn’t leave you with a gift; he left you with a burden. Look at this place.” She kicks the doorframe. “It’s a dump.”

Mom closes her eyes and purses her lips in frustration.

I almost refrain but can’t help myself. “It has more character than you’ll ever have!” I say loudly. “You’ll never understand because you’ve never had to work hard for anything in your entire life.”

Mom tosses the tongs aggressively into the pot. It startles me. “Wake me in an hour?” she says, deflated.

“Of course, Mom.” I wave her towards her room. “I’m sorry. Go rest.”

I head to my room to change into something cooler before starting the stove. My covers are in a ball at the end of the bed, and my pillow is lying on the dirty floor. Emery’s visiting, and she stole my bed – the bottom bunk. I protested, but ended up sleeping on the couch. I refuse to sleep on the top bunk. I’ve had a fear of falling for as long as I can remember. Mom said as a kid I would scream bloody murder if she put me up on playground equipment, and I clawed at Dad’s neck if he put me on his shoulders.

I peel my jeans off and use them to wipe prickly sweat off my inner thighs. Denim was a bad idea today. Something lands with a thunk on the wood-plank floor.

I bend to pick up the bronze horse. Something about it makes me smile. So, instead of placing it on my dresser like I’d planned, I bring it with me as I wade through Emery’s clothes to find my shorts. I finally find them in the corner of the closet, rumpled.

So… I write to Lani after pulling on my shorts.

Yesss? Cowboy?

I switch to sending her a voice note. “Still no. But inside the desk there were super old letters and newspaper articles. Guess what? There were girls who lived here named Daisy and Dottie who rode broncs! Some neighbour dude named Earl too, who proposed to Daisy. He was legit trying to marry her just to join their ranches, by the sound of it. There was an empty ring box.”

Crazy. I’d rather be cleaning out that barn than cleaning camera lenses! How’s the whole paying off the debt thing going?

“Um…” I say into the phone. “Well, so far, my plan is to sell as many cherries and jars of honey as possible, like Grandma and Grandpa did. Also, I found out there’s an antiques auction at the art gallery every six months, so my back-up plan is to sell valuable stuff from the ranch there, like the desk maybe. It’s risky, though… The next auction is at the end of November, literally one week before our debt is due.”

Lani messages back: Hmm. Seriously?

Yeah??

Not to lecture, but you should crunch some numbers. Dad loves you. I’m sure he’d be happy to help. Lani’s dad is an accountant and taught her money-management skills. As for me, I have no clue.

You think?

Always. Call or text him.

To harvest the honey from the frame, I cut all the comb off using the sharpest knife I can find. I let it fall into a plastic tub, cut it into cubes, and then get to squishing – my least favourite part, and the job Grandpa always made me do. I squish it using a fork and find it’s not as hard as it used to be. After pouring it into a strainer fitted over the honey bucket, I start putting sweet cherries into cartons because I need to wait a couple of hours for the honey to strain.

When the cardboard flats are filled with cartons of sweet cherries, I climb down into the root cellar and rest them on the cold dirt floor, then check the honey. It’s not done, but there’s plenty to start bottling the sour cherries.

In Grandma’s old recipe book, I find her instructions. I fill the stock pot with the pitted cherries and add the same amount of honey as Grandma called for sugar. When the mixture is set, the jars filled and cooled, I put them in the root cellar too, stacking them carefully on the wooden shelves.

I lick the thick red gel off the wooden spoon and my mouth waters. It’s so tasty that I get a spatula and scrape all the leftover out of the pot and eat that too. I dance and hum around the kitchen as I clean up, wishing I hadn’t bottled it all.

Fingers crossed my customers will love it as much as I do.

Chapter Seven

I stayed up most of the night printing out rudimentary labels, getting them perfectly straight on the jars and gathering all the supplies I needed for the market. Even though I’d worked all day, I was so filled with excitement that I couldn’t sleep, and I was up before the sun.