Page 35 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

Like, maybe confronting these demons wouldn’t be so bad since we both have them.

He held out an elbow.

“Together?”

I hesitated—just a breath, long enough to feel the pull and push of wanting and knowing better—then looped my arm through his. “Let’s go.”

And we stepped through the broken door.

We’ve started by clearing out junk. The barn is full of equipment and gear that need to go to a storage shed before we can even think about the rest of it—sandblasting the floor, repairing broken windows, rehanging the door.

So far, I think we’re each handling this fine, although we keep throwing glances at each other from across the dusty wood floor, like we’re both monitoring the other for a reaction. Once, I gently elbowed Logan out of a daze by one of the wood beams, where he had his hands shoved in his pockets, staring as though he were questioning its structural integrity.

A few minutes later he caught me frozen by three picking bags—side by side on pegs, each personalized with Liv’s iron-on patches: Blake, Liv, Ali. Liv had been practically bouncing on her toes when she showed them to me. And I’d thought, How could hefting a fifty-pound bag be so bad when I have these two people to do it with me?

Logan bumped my shoulder. I startled, realizing I’d been staring limply, tracing my thumb over the bare spot where my ring used to sit.

“Doing okay?” he asked.

I relaxed my thumb. Felt my lips stretch. “I’m fine.”

Fortunately, since then I’ve done what I do best: I shoved all the memories into imaginary boxes and stuffed them into a mental attic so deep they can’t hurt me anymore.

After we finish loading a pair of twin propane tanks onto the bed of a Gator, Logan wipes his forehead with a sleeve and asks, “How much do you think she’s not saying?”

It takes me a moment to realize he’s talking about Val. Given how late it was when she left, Logan and I haven’t had a chance to talk about what she said—and, more to the point, what she refused to tell us.

“I hate to say this,” I tell him, “but I think it’s very possible she knows what happened to your mom. I have no idea why she wouldn’t share, though.”

Logan frowns as he pushes loose a half-rotten bale of hay, revealing a damp spot underneath. “Did she seem…upset when you asked?”

I move closer to help push the bale on its side, make it easier to roll out. He’s not wrong. Val can be gruff and stubborn as hell, but she rarely gets angry. “You’re wondering if that’s why she wouldn’t say? Like, she was involved, somehow?”

He nods, and I shake my head as I consider. “Maybe. It’s possible. I don’t know. She was here on the farm when your parents were building the barn that summer.”

We don’t say any more until we’ve gotten the Gator loaded and Logan has driven it down to the storage shed.

“There’s something else to keep in mind,” I say when he’s back.

“Yeah?”

“There were two other people on the orchard that summer. Your dad. And my uncle.”

Logan squints slightly. “Were the two of them…”

“Friends. Partners. They worked together nearly every day from the time they were teenagers. My uncle always used to say that farming has a way of forging the tightest of bonds—and sometimes breaking them.”

“But not romantic,” he says.

“Never. Val’s not attracted to men. But she did love my uncle as much as a person can love another.”

Logan rests an old tractor tire against the wall as his thumb traces a rusted hinge on one of the barn’s beams.

Long silences in the middle of conversations usually make me uncomfortable, maybe because, with my mom, they were rife with land mines. But there’s something different about pauses with Logan. His silences don’t feel like disinterest. Just the opposite. Like he cares so much, he wants to think carefully before speaking.

“Maybe I’m looking for information where there isn’t any,” he says.

When he doesn’t lift his eyes from that scrap of rusted metal, I say, “And maybe you’ll find clues in these old beams?”