Page 36 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

He drops his hand. “Not sure I should admit it, but yeah.”

I consider that for a beat before saying, “A few days after Blake and Liv left, I spent a full afternoon digging through every trash can in the house. I was looking for…I don’t know. Evidence.”

I close the distance between us, partly to stand by his side and partly to avoid looking at the corner. Even with the hay bales cleared out, I have to fight to keep from picturing Liv’s light-colored hair tangling with straw.

“Don’t ask me evidence of what,” I continue. “Or how I thought I was going to find any useful information in dryer lint or empty soda cans. But that’s where I looked.”

Logan tucks his chin to study me, and there’s something in his expression that makes it feel like a string has been pulled taut between our chests. A tingle works through my shoulder blades.

Not real, I remind myself. Just nostalgia.

“You wanted to take back control,” he says.

I clear my throat. “Right. That’s it. So, that’s all to say, I will not be judgmental if you think you can find information about your mom’s disappearance in some rusted hinges.”

He smiles gently. “Fasteners. And maybe it’s nothing, but that’s exactly the problem. They shouldn’t be rusted.”

“The roof leaked a while back.”

“You said.” Arms crossed, he glowers between the ruined floorboards and the roof. I shouldn’t admit this, even just to myself, but frustration looks good on Logan. He’s all narrowed eyes and flexed jaw and pursed lips. Serious in a way that’s not severe. “That shouldn’t have happened, either. When was it?”

“I’m not sure.” I turn to get back on task and grunt as I awkwardly lift a hedge trimmer. “Maybe a few years ago?”

“Not the work quality I’d expect.”

“You’re saying something was different?” I ask.

Logan lifts a section of tangled rope and, even though his shoulders are still tight, he works it over in his hands with smooth, practiced movements. “I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. That job feels different than the others they brought me onto, but it might be because it was the first time I’d worked with them seriously or, more likely, because all my memories were messed with by what happened after.”

“What do you think you remember, though?”

He frowns at a knot in the rope and then starts pulling it out with a careful precision that’s difficult to look away from. Despite my best intentions, the slip of the rope pulls a memory loose. Logan and I were alone and we’d scraped together dinner from whatever we could find in the fridge. My head was on Logan’s knee, curls splayed across his lap, and his fingers were combing slowly through my hair—steady, patient, like he was working something free.

He blows out a breath, and I startle. Kick myself for letting my mind wander again.

“My parents often weren’t on the same page,” Logan says, fortunately oblivious to my reverie. He weighs a knot in his palm. “They had worked together for almost two decades, but it was never smooth. Mom loved the work, but Dad wasn’t fully there. It caused a lot of fights. Mom would be up in the rafters, focused and precise, and Dad would be down on the foundation, half listening or distracted. She’d snap at him, telling him to pay attention, but it never seemed to stick. I know it caused a lot of mistakes, too.

“But that summer felt worse. It wasn’t just that they weren’t on the same page. They were rarely in the same room. Mom was always up here working while Dad almost never was. Like he’d run to the lumberyard or whatever, drop something off for her, and immediately head out. They weren’t even arguing about it anymore. I thought maybe it was because they had me to pick up the slack—to stay up here with Mom. Or maybe that’s just how bad it had gotten.”

He shakes his head and leans against a beam. “But, also, I don’t know. She’d always been deep into the work, much more than Dad. And breaking things up was a perfectly normal part of their routine. Especially once I came on board. Maybe there’s nothing significant about any of that. If I’m being honest, what actually strikes me as different about that summer is that it was the first time I really connected with her.”

“How so?”

“Mom always seemed most herself when she was building something, like she only felt fully whole when she was holding a hammer and a fistful of nails. Me and my brothers never interrupted her when she was working, even Mason knew not to. But working with her that summer, I saw it up close—what the work meant to her. And for the first time, I guess I wasn’t in the way of that. I was part of it.”

My back stiffens as I register how eerily familiar it sounds. Not because my mom threw herself into work—she was a travel nurse and her job wasn’t so much a passion as a convenient means of excusing all our moves—but rather the idea of unspoken expectations. And the way he’s describing that distance. Like you’re standing across a ravine from someone you want to love and, even though they’re close, you have no way of reaching them.

“I get it,” I say.

“Do you?” he asks, genuinely.

“I know what it feels like to miss a parent who’s right in front of you.”

Logan’s gaze on me is unsteadying. I feel like it’s rocking through me, a tractor crashing over a ravine. I take a small step back.

“You must have theories,” I say. “About what happened.”

He rubs at the back of his neck. “My dad never talked about her after she left. Honestly, he never talked about much at all. I’d try to ask him about her, or even Andrew’s grades or whatever, and he’d just stand up and walk away. But there was this one night, when Andrew had just won this huge soccer tournament. Dad managed to show up to the trophy ceremony, had cake with us. After, we were sitting in the living room—Mason and Andrew had gone to bed—and he looked over at me, and right out of the blue, he said it was his fault. ‘Maybe she’s punishing me,’ he said. ‘Maybe I deserve it.’ ”