Page 112 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

“That’s why I started to bottle everything up. I covered my tears with a smile. I told myself that choosing happiness was a kind of strength. And all it did was rot me from the inside out.”

I can feel the pressure of tears behind my eyes and bubbling up my throat, and I let the sob escape.

“And now look at me,” I say, gesturing toward the darkened skies, heavy with rain clouds. The pale, incandescent crystal fruit, dull under a slate sky. The wind shifts colder, slicing across my cheeks. “My crop is ruined in more ways than one. I’m going to lose this farm and the one place I’ve ever called home. This is what comes from pretending. This is what comes from trying to be fine when I’m not.

“And maybe it’s too late for me to save anything but myself, but if that’s the case then so be it. What’s important is that I don’t want to live like that anymore. I don’t want to be afraid of how I feel. Or of how you’ll look at me if I show it.”

Silence fills the line. The trees creak. My heart thunders in my ears.

“I’m—” Mom starts. She doesn’t usually stumble over her words. “I’m sorry.”

For the briefest of moments, hope buoys my heart. I’ve gotten through to her. I’ve broken through the vacuum seal that she keeps around her heart.

And then she says, “I’m sorry, Ali. I can’t do this.”

My heart free falls. My knees fold. “You…”

“I’m not good at this,” she says, voice hard and cold. “I never have been.”

“I don’t need you to be good at it,” I try, fingers on my forehead, desperation crawling into my voice. “I just need you to try. You just need to talk. You just have to be here with me.”

“I’m sorry I’m not the person you need me to be.”

The silence that follows is absolute.

She hangs up.

Cold droplets of rain patter across leaves, prickling against my face and hands. My chest trembles, then heaves, and a stream of my tears joins the elements, running along my jaw and into my mouth until I taste salt and rainwater.

Briefly, I worry the rain will turn to hail again, like the night of the gala. But as I let my chest heave, let the tears mingle with the elements, the droplets only drum on the canopy, a steady, inevitable roar.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

In the morning, the pears are still crystal.

And I’m out of options.

I find the number for a real estate agent who specializes in agriculture. She’s an efficient woman with a steady manner and, after a fifteen-minute phone call, we agree to meet at a coffee shop in town the day after tomorrow.

Then, I enjoy the time I have left. I wander through the rows in a statement-print dress and fleece leggings. When I get hungry, I eat a sandwich on the porch and consider my beautiful ruin. I climb into the attic and flip through old ribbons from a county fair in which my great-grandfather was awarded a prize for Most Unusual Fruit. At the bottom of the box, I find a sepia-toned photograph of a man who looks vaguely like Uncle Martin holding up a pear shaped like a heart. I clasp the photo to my chest and try to imagine what he could have been feeling.

That evening, I fall asleep wrapped in a blanket, curled on the porch, trying to soak in the beauty of the place I live.

For now.

I wake to my name.

Knocking at the door.

I rub the sleep from my eyes, unravel myself from the pretzel that I slept in, and drag my stiff body through the house. I’m massaging the back of my neck and longingly thinking about anti-inflammatories when another rapping knock, smart and firm, hastens my steps.

“Be right there!” I call as I yank open the—

Mom.

Her hair, usually smoothed into a precise middle part, is creased on one side, and flying out of the hair clip on the other. Her blouse is rumpled, like maybe she slept in it. Her eyes are wide and bloodshot. There’s a sedan I don’t recognize in the driveway behind her, shiny enough that it must be rental.

“Mom,” I say, too stunned to say anything else.