Page 49 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

“Sorry,” he says, eyes fixed somewhere on the floor. “I know you’re perfectly comfortable on a ladder.”

“I am,” I manage, although, at this moment, even solid ground would feel unsteady.

By the time we’re buffing the floor with an industrial sander, I notice that I’ve stopped flinching every time I walk into the barn. As we start in on the stain, it’s getting easier to glance at the corner where the hay bales used to be. This, at least partly, is because it’s so effortless to watch Logan instead. Like the way his shirt rides up as he lifts the new barn door onto the track. Or the pull of the muscles across his back as he hooks it over the rollers.

He glides it back and forth, testing that smooth, soundless movement. Then he looks up at me like he’s waiting for my assessment.

“Nicely done,” I tell him.

Logan peels off his gloves and stuffs them in his back pocket, the fingers peeking out like a burly pocket square. He wipes at his brow with his forearm and steps back to appraise his work.

“I wish they’d done this job right from the start,” he says. “But at least now I can fix what they broke.”

I frown and bump his shoulder with mine. “Hey, I’m sorry that even now, you’re still cleaning up their mess.”

“I don’t mind.”

Something catches in my chest as he smiles softly, but I push it aside.

In the evenings, we search the journals together, as promised. Usually, I’ll prop myself up with floral-print pillows on the couch, a journal held aloft until the weight of my exhaustion takes over. I’ll wake hours later to find the lights off and a blanket tucked around my toes, even though I don’t remember covering myself with it.

Logan will nearly always be where I left him: hunched at the dining room table, lamplight pooling over the pages and his clenched fists. Sometimes I’ll find myself watching him—his furrowed brow, the careful way he turns a page, that etch of his mouth—until I stir.

And turn away before it can go anywhere else.

Sunday comes and goes and, yet again, I let Mom’s call go unanswered. Forty-two seconds later, her voicemail pops up. It’s the same formal, stilted message, and I can feel my stomach steeling itself against that wall of indifference in her voice.

Meanwhile, I haven’t yet managed to look at the farm’s books. I also haven’t brought myself to open my near-weekly letters from the bank and creditors, but I have started putting them in a shoebox in the dining room, one step closer to the office, instead of letting them pile up in the kitchen. Progress?

Who knows, but I’m certain I’ll have the fortitude to tackle all that once I’ve gotten some good news about the crop.

Which hasn’t happened yet, because so far, the mysterious pear affliction has only gotten worse. And now it’s undeniably supernatural. The coating that began as white and waxy has started to turn to glass. It’s like the pears are covered in clear, hard polish. Or like a late frost crept across the branches and claimed the fruit in its icy grasp.

The first time I see one, I freeze. Logan, a pace behind, stops just short of my shoulder. Then he takes a measured step to the side, putting about a grizzly bear’s worth of space between us.

We stare at the fruit.

“They look like crystals,” I marvel.

A crystal pear turns in the orchard’s constant breeze, sending dappled light in pink and yellow across my pale-colored sundress.

I turn to find Logan watching the speckled lights spin across my waist. When our eyes meet, my toes go numb.

“Even Val can’t deny this,” he says, low.

I nod and swallow past a constriction in my throat. “I think it’s time to push her. I’ll try alone this time, though.”

I have my opportunity a few days later when Val barrels through the new barn door, waving her ticket sales like a winning bingo card.

I nearly capsize off my ladder when she starts shouting out numbers. “I’m sorry. Two hundred?”

It’s double what we discussed.

She rubs her palms together. “Folks in town are eager. Could be because this farm’s always been a bit strange and they’re just looking to sate their own curiosity, but I’m not going to spit a gift horse in the face.”

“You mean ‘look a gift horse in the mouth.’ ”

She shrugs. “I wouldn’t do that, either.”