Page 109 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

But I also know I’m strong enough to admit and accept that now.

Logan tucks the travel mug into his elbow so he can reach for the handle. I wait for the click of the mechanism, the groan of the hinges.

But as he presses on the lever, I watch it stick. A pause. Logan stares at the handle. His face turns minutely, angled down so I can’t see his expression. I can see his lungs moving, though. Steady, long breaths.

“Drive safe, okay?” I say, heart hammering so hard I think I might collapse.

His grip tightens on the door handle.

This time it clicks open.

And then he’s gone.

Chest heaving, eyes streaming, I take myself to the trees.

I clutch my jacket to my chest as the pain takes over. The valley’s merciless wind claws at the hem of my dress. The light stutters over the leaves, fracturing over the crystal fruit, as my fingers tremble. When I take a shaky inhale, the smell is startling. Sweet with an edge, like the sting of pinesap that won’t wash clean.

Blinking, I sink to my knees in the cool grass and Lydia’s words stir in my mind—about how subtle the magic can be. How you have to pay attention to notice it.

How these trees made space for her to ask her questions. My uncle was like that—a good listener. When he was listening, even the birds would go quiet.

I think about that woman from Appalachia and the hail that wouldn’t stop after her cousin died.

The man whose wife left him, and the marsh that forgot how to breathe.

What if…

What if the orchard’s magic has never been about the people who left?

What if it’s always grown from the hearts of the ones who stayed?

Not the land that remembers. The trees that feel.

Perhaps the forget-me-nots didn’t bloom because of Lydia, but because my uncle fell in love with her. Then, his years of devastating, never-ending bad luck might have reflected his heartbreak, and also his increasing isolation from the rest of the world. A choice that he made, not something thrust on him.

My mom said the land reacted differently to each of my grandmother’s husbands—but that might have had less to do with who they were and everything to do with how she felt about them.

And me.

The pears that started crystallizing after Blake and Liv left.

The tree that bloomed when I was bursting with happiness.

The hail on the day I finally released my bottled-up anger.

And the pears that have refused to ripen? Maybe they exist because I, too, have stalled since the gala. Frozen with Logan. Stealing time.

It is as Logan and I said—not forcing anyone to choose anything, but a reflection. It’s a mirror held to that which is most deeply, intrinsically important.

My feelings.

The truest expressions of them all.

And with this realization, I lift on my feet and walk through the orchard. I feel. And I see it.

My chest lifts and falls with the rise and fall of buzzing bees. An ache curls in my chest like a lone leaf folding against the autumn wind. And when I tip my face toward the sun, the trees exhale.

Chapter Twenty-Eight