Page 67 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

She frowns back. “Yeah, well, this particular secret doesn’t have nothing to do with you.”

I sigh. “I already know about Lydia.”

Val startles. “Excuse me?”

“We found a letter she wrote to Martin.”

Val crosses her arms and even though Logan fixed it, she still manages to elicit a creak from her chair as she pushes back in it. “You shouldn’t be nosing around other people’s mail, girl.”

“To be fair, we also shouldn’t be reading other people’s journals.”

“That’s different,” Val protests. “I already knew the gist of what was in those, knew they wouldn’t have direct references to the curse or…anything else Martin would have wanted secret. He always kept those professional—well, professional for him, anyway—just in case he needed to show something to the packing house or some pesticide consultant.”

“Fine,” I say. “But Lydia’s also Logan’s mom. So maybe this secret had nothing to do with me, but I think he has a right to know what happened to her.”

Val relaxes minutely, tipping forward in her chair again. “Yeah. That’s true. I reckon he does.”

“And Uncle Martin was in love with her,” I press. “That’s why the farm had so many problems after she left. The codling moths and the sudden explosion of the irrigation system and all the rest of the stuff I read about in those journals. It went on for years.”

I’m guessing, of course, but it fits. And I’m hoping that if I frame my question as a statement, Val will be more likely to tell me what I want to know.

My tactic seems to work because she nods. “That’s what he thought, yeah.”

I hold my breath as I craft my next question-posing-as-a-statement, aiming for nonchalant but possibly missing the mark by a mile. “And the two of them had an affair.”

This time Val either catches the strain in my voice or she isn’t fooled by my tactic. She purses her lips. “I don’t know about that. Martin never told me exactly what happened between them.”

My heart pounds low in my ears as Val watches me for another long beat.

“I’m serious, Ali,” she says. “Now you know every bit that I do.”

I nod and spin my glass of my otherwise untouched rhubarb wine, mostly to give my hands something to do. I can’t dwell on my uncle’s mistakes. What matters is the curse, the reason behind the crystal pears. Unfortunately, this new explanation fits better than I’d like.

The pears started crystalizing after Blake and Liv left. That’s also when all kinds of other weird stuff showed up, like the persistent fog. And the skunk with the spray that was impossible to clean off. The multicolored rabbits, too. To be fair, those were more nuisance than malicious, but I suppose not every aspect of the curse has been problematic. My mom mentioned golden leaves and gemstone rocks from when she was growing up—and I can’t see the harm in either of those.

Val’s still watching me. “You’ve always been like him, you know.”

I startle, try to reorient. “Delusional, you mean?”

She winces. “I shouldn’t have said that. But, no, that’s not what I’m talking about, although you do both have a way of focusing on the bright side. I was talking about the way you both love—loved—these trees. Like they’re part of the family.”

And even though I’m still angry with him, her words stir a memory that’s now tinged with both fondness and grief. That summer Uncle Martin and I found fire blight on the main trunk of one of his oldest trees and knew we’d have to pull it up, roots and all. He hid the chainsaw away from it as long as he could, like he was shielding the tree from its own fate. Then he patted the limbs and whispered a goodbye before making that first cut. He was so kind. So earnest.

But now I don’t know if I can see him like that anymore. Not after everything he kept from me.

I shake my head, bottling up these thoughts. I guess my entire childhood with Martin is also going in a box.

This mental attic of mine is getting about as full as the actual one.

“I told him,” Val continues when I don’t say anything, “that he should trust that in you. That he could tell you the truth and you would still want to stay.”

She eyes me significantly as I turn that over.

Cursed to a lifetime of solitude. Staying put while all the people I love eventually leave. It’s one of the worst fates I can imagine.

In fact, I can imagine only one that’s worse.

Leaving myself.