Page 114 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

“Oh.” Given all that buildup, I was expecting her to say something more significant. Then again, it’s Mom, so the fact that she’s voluntarily bringing up her own mother is notable. “You mean like figurines?”

She still looks like she’s working herself up to something. “I believe they were paperweights, although she never had them holding down paper. They sat on almost every windowsill and end table in the house. Some clear, some colorful. There was one—a pear. It was smoother than these, more like glass than a crystal. It was her favorite.”

I’m not sure why we’re talking about this. “I haven’t seen them in the attic.”

“Martin told me she smashed them all. After I left.”

I take a surprised breath. “That’s a bit extreme.”

She crosses her arms and smooths her fingers against her jacket sleeve. “He took her side, actually.”

I try not to let my surprise show. Not, I suppose, because Uncle Martin’s position in this argument surprises me. Rather because I can finally see the edge of where this is going and I don’t want her to recoil from it.

I’m rewarded for my patience because she adds, “He told me…he said that Mom losing me was worse than all four of her husbands combined. He told me that things started happening—terrible things. It went on for years. He said it was my fau—”

She inhales sharply through her nostrils, eyes closed.

“He said it was your fault?” I encourage.

To my surprise, she nods and continues. “I knew the land molded itself to the presence of the people who lived on it, but I didn’t think my presence or absence could have been that influential. I was certain he was exaggerating. I believed he was only attempting to make me feel guilty so I would move back. I shut him out.”

I lean against a tree trunk and pick at a sheet of loose bark. It’s easy to empathize with my uncle’s side of this story. I can imagine him by my grandmother’s side, watching everything spinning out of control—elements and diseases wreaking havoc on his precious trees. I can imagine his anguish, feeling he knew why but also powerless to fix it. “I think it was really hard for him when you left.”

Her lips bracket with a frown. “I suppose.”

An uneasy current of wind rides over our hillside, sending leaves shivering and crystals jangling. This very well could be the end of the conversation. Mom will zip up her jacket, and we’ll trudge back to the house in stilted silence and endure an awkward conversation over a cup of tea before she gets back into her rental car. We’ll go back to our calls on Sundays that I’ll often neglect to answer.

But even though I don’t fully understand the gesture yet, Mom showing up here with a wrinkled blouse and mussed hair was clearly an olive branch. Also, even though this place is the right one for me, I’ve come to understand why someone would want to leave it.

So, I extend a branch of my own. “You were happier, though. When you moved away.”

She blinks, and the rigid set of her shoulders softens slightly. “It was the happiest I’d ever been in my life. Even though I’d left so much behind. More than—” She cuts herself off. “Just. A lot.”

“Did you ever think about coming back?”

“Mother and Martin and…and everyone else, they were all so angry with me. It only made it harder. Even after Mom died. Even after Martin got sick.”

I think about Lydia, her millions of choices. “Did you try to talk to him, though? Before the end?”

She closes her eyes for a moment before nodding. “I called when you told me about his diagnosis. And again after you said—when you were sure the end was coming. Last winter. But, both times, Martin told me it was too late. And I—I didn’t push. Perhaps I should have come anyway, to try to get him to talk to me. Perhaps if I’d come back, I could have—” She takes a sharp inhale, almost like a gasp for breath. Like she’s never spoken this much in one swoop before. “I couldn’t do it. It had been too many years.”

It’s painful to imagine what that conversation might have been like for them. Then again, I’m not sure a reconciliation at the end of his life would have been possible or fair for Martin. It would have taken time and energy that he might not have wanted to spend, not when there were so few days left. “He was dealing with a lot at end. I think he felt abandoned by the people who cared about him. I think him pulling away wasn’t only about you.”

She frowns. “I see. But that’s not why I’m telling you this.”

“Oh. Why, then?”

Despite the cool October air, the tips of Mom’s ears have gone pink. She takes a deep, even breath and, although I can see how much it costs her, she holds my eye contact. “I know I’ve never—I’ve never been able to say the right thing to you. Especially when you’re upset. I’ve never been the person you need me to be.”

I’m tempted to say it’s okay, but it’s not. It never has been. “I know.”

“I very much doubt I ever will be that person.”

I swallow, and the air feels thin. “I know that, too.”

She flexes two gloved fists, in and out again, like she doesn’t quite know what to do with her hands. Then, she closes the distance between us with two staccato steps. Her fingers find my forearm. My throat releases a startled oh.

“But I want to try to be that person,” she says. “And I can be here with you. If my presence can help, if I can fix anything by staying on the farm, I will do it. As long as it takes.”