Chapter 14 Noah
Chapter fourteen
Noah
The ground was covered in a layer of frost this morning. There’s still quite a bit coating the landscape now, several hours after sunrise. The way the light bounces off the remaining icy crystals is breathtaking. I can’t help but stop in my tracks and take it all in.
This is my favorite time of year. It’s the heart of fall, and the busy season for the orchard is well underway. The sun is still warm, but there’s signs of what’s to come on every blade of grass and individual leaf.
Change is in the air.
Stillness is coming soon.
But Mother Nature’s easing us into the season. For now, there’s just frost.
I want Sawyer to see this.
Next time she stays the night, we’ll get up early to catch it.
God, I can’t wait till she’s back here again.
The grass crackles beneath my feet as I make the trek from the house to the storefront.
I’ve been up for a few hours and have already been over here once this morning.
But Edna comes in later on Tuesdays, and I haven’t seen her for a few days.
Figured I’d swing back around to check in with her before heading out.
Shiloh nudges my leg as we approach the bakery door.
“You can come in,” I mumble to her implied request. I try to keep her out of the store and barn during business hours, though she inevitably does what she wants, when she wants, so I don’t know why I bother.
“Edna?” I call out, rubbing my hands together to warm them as I step inside.
Shiloh follows, then trots off toward the apple room, no doubt looking for someone who will bestow extra scratches upon her.
“Good morning.” Edna pushes through the door leading to the storage room, her trusty clipboard in hand. Must be inventory day.
As she rounds the corner, backlit by a hazy stream of light shining through the window, she looks so much like my grandma.
Same sharp jaw. Identical curve to her nose.
Their laughs were the same, too.
Sometimes, when I hear her from across the store, my brain conjures up the image of Gran. Or of my mom.
The tousled edges of my heart fray a little more as I study Edna, wishing the others weren’t gone.
God, I miss them so fucking much.
I swallow back the ache, once again compartmentalizing my grief.
It’s the only way I can function. For months after the incident, I berated myself over not being sad enough regarding the loss of my parents and grandma, but a person can only take so much heartache, and most of mine is reserved for my wife.
I miss Meg every minute of every day.
I don’t often have the bandwidth to miss the rest of them just as fiercely.
“Are you lost in that big head of yours, Noah?”
With a quiet chuckle, I snap out of it. “I was,” I admit. I move to lift my cap, only to remember I didn’t put one on my “big head” this morning. Instead, I run my hand through my hair out of habit.
When I meet Edna’s gaze, it’s as if her watery blue eyes see right through me, and all the heartache rushes right back to the surface.
Gran was older. She had more wrinkles on her face, the lines and creases as beautiful as delicate, intricate lace.
She lived a long life.
Despite how much I miss her, I feel the least sad about losing her.
A stream of anger trickles in.
They’re all gone because of her.
With a sharp breath, I strike that thought from my mind.
They’re all gone because of what happened, I remind myself. It wasn’t her fault. Just like I probably couldn’t have prevented it.
They’re hard truths I’ve struggled to accept. But they’re still truths, nonetheless.
“Did you need something?” Edna asks, her brow furrowed.
With a shake of my head, I put the grief aside for now.
I was having a good day, dammit.
If I had to choose one aspect of grief I hate the most, it would be the way it can swoop in and steal all of a person’s joy without notice.
I won’t let that happen today.
I’m alive, so I owe it to those I lost to fucking act like it.
“This weekend is daylight savings,” I say, taking a sharp turn away from my nostalgic, grief-ridden thoughts and focusing on more practical matters.
Edna plants her hands on her hips. “I was certain I’d live long enough to see the day they actually outlaw that outdated, disruptive shenanigan, but every year, that’s getting less likely.”
My lips twitch in a smile. “If they ever get rid of daylight savings, the clock in the cider mill will be right twelve months out of the year instead of six.”
She tsks but smiles.
“I’ll come by your place next Sunday to change the batteries in your smoke detectors. Make me a list of what else needs to be done.”
With a gentle smile, she nods. She knows I’m just as concerned about her safety as I am anyone’s.
“Coffee?” she asks, moving toward the pot.
“No. I’ve had three cups already.”
She tsks again as she pours herself a sizable cup. She sips the perfectly black coffee slowly and hums in satisfaction.
I have to hold back a shudder. Edna’s hardcore.
“Have you seen the books?” she asks.
I grimace.
In addition to running the bakery and taking on most of the miscellaneous tasks around the storefront, Edna’s been the bookkeeper for the orchard for more than five decades.
“I haven’t. How bad is it?”
A mischievous smile teases the corners of her lips as she takes another sip of her coffee, keeping me in suspense. Eventually, she lifts one brow and says, “Not bad at all.”
“Not bad at all?” Frowning, I assess her, then the store around us.
“Better than last year. And the year before that.”
Better than two years ago?
My heart flutters. That means…
Hope.
There’s hope.
After loss and as I’m still finding my way through the hardest season of my fucking life, there’s hope.
Sawyer’s face flashes in my mind.
Her pretty freckled skin. Her shiny copper red hair.
Her smile. That fucking smile.
There’s hope and there’s her, and the books are not bad at all this month.
I can’t hold back my grin.
Sawyer isn’t solely responsible for the orchard’s shift in the right direction.
I know that. Mercer and his insistence are mainly responsible.
If he hadn’t talked me into allowing the orchard to be used as his class’s case study, we wouldn’t be here.
The students’ efforts have already made a difference.
Being back at full capacity after running a skeleton operation last year doesn’t hurt either.
It’s not all Sawyer’s doing. But damn if she isn’t the symbol and the anchor and the catalyst of it all.
My chest fills with a welcome warmth. “Okay. Good. Yeah. That’s really good.”
Edna snorts.
Wincing, I look away and rub my brow line.
Apparently I can’t even think about Sawyer without tripping over my words or losing my train of thought.
I inhale a deep, cleansing breath and set my shoulders, pulling myself together. “I’m heading to the back to harvest honey.”
With a renewed sense of optimism, I cut through the apple room, whistling for Shiloh as I pass.
I scrape along another frame, flip it quickly, repeat the process, and then insert it into the extractor. It’s the same one we’ve used since the orchard opened in 1908.
As a kid, I loved cranking the big handle, turning the machine as fast as I could and watching the honey splatter the sides of the container.
Hell, who do I think I’m fooling? I still love harvesting honey.
As the golden essence coats the bucket, an idea occurs to me.
I pull out my phone, open the camera app, and try to line up a decent angle.
I’ve seen Sawyer do it dozens of times. In the almost twenty years I had with Meg, she shot thousands of pictures with her DSLR. It can’t be that hard.
My first picture is blurry. The next three all have a weird dark spot. Only after I take another photo do I realize that dark spot is actually my shadow.
Dammit.
I’m shit at this. Clearly I need to leave the actual content creation to the students. Or I need to get serious about hiring someone to do the orchard’s marketing, like Mercer’s been bugging me to do for years.
Crouching, I try a different angle, this time zooming in and focusing on the spout, where the honey is slowly dripping from the centrifuge into the collection tub.
The image I capture this time isn’t half bad.
Standing, I navigate to my text thread with Sawyer. I add the photo, then pause with my thumbs over the screen, racking my brain for a message to go with it.
I type out thinking of you but quickly delete it. Does dripping honey really make me think of her?
Yes.
But I probably shouldn’t admit that.
I type Wish you were here, but that feels stupid, too. What am I, an outdated postcard?
Annoyed with my indecisiveness, I hammer out a short, sweet message. Well, not entirely sweet.
Noah: Can’t wait for you to taste this.
Once I’ve clicked Send, I close the thread and lock my screen.
A heartbeat later, I turn it back on again and tap on the Messages app, eager to see if she’s opened it. Or if she’s responding.
But it’s still marked as delivered, and there are no gray dots bouncing on the screen to signal that she’s typing.
Impatiently, I wander toward the apiary, checking my phone every three seconds.
Was I too forward?
Was that too suggestive?
Shit.
Maybe I should have run it by Mercer first. Asked for a suggested caption. He’s better with words.
I huff out a frustrated breath, willing the device still clutched in my hand to vibrate with a notification.
As I’m scowling at it, the sound of the bees cuts through my runaway thoughts. They’re buzzing louder than usual.
My chest constricts. Christ. Of course they are. They can sense my anxiety.
I blow out another breath, this one more slowly, then inhale deeply through my nose.
I survey the land around me. The trees my father planted with his father. The wildflowers my grandmother tended to as a little girl.
I take in the land I love. The land I’m proud to cultivate. The land that’s home to a small business that’s doing “not too bad at all” this month.
My heartrate slows.
A sense of hopeful ease settles around me.
As I ground myself, I acknowledge that for the first time in a long time, my life is not so bad either.