Page 98 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

He turns to me. Even though his body is graphite-still, there’s a storm churning in his eyes. I don’t know whether to reach for him or give him space. The silence feels like a test I should know how to pass, like there’s a right thing to say if I could only find the words. But I don’t think I’m up for this task.

Which is maybe why I say, “Mason was right. You’re nothing like her.”

They’re opposites in every way. Where Logan is slow to smile, Lydia is quick with one. She’s warm and practiced, with a customer-service polish that I’ve never seen in Logan. But the important differences run deeper. Logan shoulders every burden within reach, especially the ones that don’t belong to him. Lydia, meanwhile, could barely acknowledge her own.

“Was that the wrong thing to say?” I blurt out when he hasn’t yet spoken. “I’m sorry, I just—”

“No, it wasn’t. I’ve been thinking about the same thing since we walked into that store.” His jaw muscle leaps, and he rolls his fists again. “I didn’t recognize the woman in there. But then again…maybe I wouldn’t. She wasn’t exactly the most attentive mother, and the more I think about it, she wasn’t always happy. But she was there with us. And one day she wasn’t. You heard her. She wanted to leave for years and never did. That’s how it’s been for me, too. Thinking about all that made me angry. Too angry. I went too far.”

I reach across the seats and grab his wrist, tighten my fingers onto the ridges of his forearm. “You stayed when you were needed. You heard her out today when you could have screamed instead. You are loyal and honest in every way she isn’t.”

His breath catches, barely audible, but enough to stir the silence in the cab. “Does it matter if I did those things even when part of me wanted something else?”

“It matters more,” I insist to his uncertainty. “That’s when it matters most.”

His eyes close as he rubs at the bridge of his nose. “I still shouldn’t have let myself get angry with her.”

“No.” I scooch toward him and yank his hand away from his face. “You were brilliant.”

His eyes snap open. Fly to me.

“I wouldn’t have been able to do what you just did,” I explain. “I wouldn’t be able to…to tell her how I feel. You stood your ground and explained your perspective, and you didn’t cross any lines, at least not any that I could tell. That kind of conviction in your emotion, it’s…it’s impressive. You’re impressive.”

Logan holds my gaze, and that storm in his eyes quiets. His irises flicker, as if holding a scrap of refracted light. Then he reaches for me, his fingers brushing my elbow before settling there. “Ali.”

“Logan.”

“I believe you could, too. If you decided to.”

My mom’s flat expression ripples through my mind. “Maybe.”

Outside the cab, a perfectly normal-looking cedar sways in a perfectly mundane wind. Maybe I should feel glad to be here, away from my complicated trees. Away from the stump where I split open my elbow and the strange weather and my ruined fruit. Instead, my chest twinges so abruptly it’s almost painful.

“Do you think we could go back to Apple Valley?” I ask. “I think I need to be home.”

Logan offers me a soft smile and turns on the engine. I let my head sink to the cool window and listen to the tires rumble as the college town melts into endless gray. The highway is slick from rain, making mirrors that reflect the cloudy skies.

After rows of harvested cornfields transition to evergreen slopes blurred with fog, Logan asks, “Do you blame the orchard for the way your mom raised you? Not that she left, but all the choices after. Moving from place to place. Never letting you settle.”

I tip my temple against the seat’s backrest and think about the impatient frown that would bracket Mom’s lips every time something displeased her. Traffic congestion. Sporadic power outages. Chatty neighbors. Neighbors who left out their recycling bins for an extra day or who sped around corners. Overly strict teachers. Overly lax teachers. And every time that unhappiness started to register, she was already planning a new move.

Could that have been shaped by her upbringing? Maybe. But also that seems like the work of the mystical.

“I think my mom’s choices came from her. Not the trees.”

Logan nods, and ever so gently, he asks, “And Blake? Liv? Not just what happened in the barn, but everything after.”

I swallow, remembering the familiar look they shared, the one that corkscrewed through my chest. Their decision to move to Apple Valley. Their decision to show up to my home. “I think that maybe us living together gave them an opportunity to do something they wanted to do all along.”

He blows out a breath and nods, like I’ve just agreed with him about something. Maybe I have.

“They all made choices,” he says. “Your mom. Mine. Blake and Liv. Not just one choice. Many. And I don’t think they get to blame the trees for any of it.”

Awareness prickles the back of my neck. “What are you saying?”

He glances at me sidelong. “I don’t think the curse has forced anyone to leave. I don’t think it has that power.”

And even though Logan has expressed skepticism about the nature of the curse before, for the first time, I really see what he means.