Page 22 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

“Both healthy.”

They watch each other for a beat longer and I’m reminded of what Val told me when I texted her last night to say I might have found a third picker. I’d expected her to be elated, but instead she wrote: He’s moving onto the farm? Not sure that’s a good idea.

Why not? I asked. He needs a place to live and you said yourself we needed another set of hands. It’s not for sure yet, though. He hasn’t committed.

She didn’t respond to that, and I wrote it off as Val’s inherent skepticism of change and new people.

She tugs fingers through her damp hair, pulling one section into an upright spike. “Haven’t seen anything like this before. Show me the rest?”

We trudge back the way we came, Logan and I a few paces in front, slow enough that Val’s booted gait doesn’t grow too labored. Fortunately, with my aunt here and my new growing anxiety about this mysterious disease, I can’t process the complicated and possibly inappropriate emotions that came up when Logan landed on top of me.

Instead, I focus on Val, who is circling the first set of affected trees like a prowling jungle cat. She selects a piece of waxy fruit from one of the lower branches, sniffs it, and scrapes a thumbnail along the waxy coating.

“How bad is it?” I ask.

“Don’t know yet.” She snatches her book from me and braces it against her thigh as she trips through pages. “Quit interrupting my process.”

For a while we continue like that—Logan and I watching as Val gathers choice pieces, discarding most to the base of the trees but keeping some bundled in one arm. Occasionally, she fishes a pocketknife out of her fanny pack to cut through the wax coating of a pear and sniff its insides.

Finally, what feels like an age later, Val straight-arm points toward the farmhouse and shouts, “We’re done here!”

In the dining room, my aunt arrays her pears on the white linen runner. The one on the leftmost end has a waxy surface, like it was sprayed to keep fresh. The one on the far right is the one Logan and I picked: unusually smooth and firm. Under the dining room lights, it remains solidly matte. The ones in the middle, I realize, hover between—dull and pale in spots with a faint granular sheen.

Val sinks into an antique chair and steeples her fingers. “What are your theories?”

I take a chair across from her as I run through every fruit malady Uncle Martin ever lectured me about. His lessons weren’t exactly linear, especially when it came to diseases and pests. Until I was a teenager, I thought powdery mildew was “ghost dust” and I hadn’t understood that we are the only farmers who call aphids “juice weasels.” Still, even as I plumb the deepest recesses of my mind, I can’t think of any disease or pest that would turn pears pearly white.

“Maybe a new disease or fungus,” I say finally. “Something we’ve never seen before.”

Val nods. “Unfortunately, I think that’s right.”

“And there’s nothing like this in your book?” Logan asks from his station where he’s leaning against the doorjamb, stretching out his long body.

“No,” she says as she digs a thumbnail into the fruit with the hardest shell but barely leaves an indent. “But I’m thinking we might find something about this somewhere else.”

“Where?” I ask.

Val pushes herself to her feet but instantly winces and slams a fist against the table. I rush forward to support her elbow, but she glares at me until I back off. From his side of the room, Logan’s eyes shift between us.

Val blows out a breath, looking down at her boot. “Might have overdone that a bit.”

“What do you need?” I ask.

Her eyes lift toward the ceiling.

“Your uncle’s journals. He kept careful notes on the land for years. We’ve had our fair share of afflictions around here and if this is something he saw before, he’d’ve made note of it. Maybe he even has a remedy.”

“Of course,” I say, straightening. How many times did I see Uncle Martin traipse through the trees with a leather-bound journal tucked under his armpit? Or scribble on some pages from his perch on the John Deere? They were packed with his observations, the same way his pockets were stuffed with twine, buttons, and anything that could someday be useful. If there’s an answer to this problem, it will be in those pages.

“Where would they be?” Logan asks, pushing off his wall.

“The attic,” Val says. “Unless it’s cleared out?”

I shake my head. Blake, Liv, and I barely had the bandwidth to go through the generations of belongings in the house’s actual living space. The attic and basement are untouched, except for the boxes of Martin’s belongings that I crammed on top of the others.

“Good. In a box somewhere, then. Probably. God knows what all he was hoarding.”

“We can get it,” I say.