Brooks
She’s been up at the house for a while, I tell myself that as I tighten the valve on the fermenter for the third time, the metal cool and slightly damp beneath my fingers, the faint hiss of pressure release the only sound in the room.
I check the gravity reading again, even though I already know it's steady, the numbers unmoving, the hydrometer bobbing lazily in the cylinder like it's mocking me for needing something to do.
I straighten a clipboard that doesn't need straightening, aligning the corners with unnecessary precision, smoothing down a page that's already flat… and still, she’s not back.
I pause, listening for footsteps that never come—no creak of the porch boards, no soft thud of boots on the warehouse floor, no rustle of movement from the cabin.
It’s been long enough for the hum of the refrigeration unit to grow louder, for the scent of apples and yeast to feel heavier in the air, for the quiet to stretch thin and uneasy.
Long enough that the silence stops feeling peaceful and starts feeling wrong.
"Willa?" I call toward the open warehouse door.
Nothing.
A knot pulls tight in my stomach.
I wipe my hands on a shop towel and head toward the cabin, taking the porch steps two at a time before letting myself inside.
"Willa?"
Still nothing.
She's upstairs. I know it before I even reach the landing.
The bedroom door is open. She stands with her back to me, perfectly still, one hand resting against the edge of my dresser. The gravity log lies forgotten beside her.
And in her hands… my mother's scrapbook. The one I just pulled out of the moving box at the back of my closet to look through. I completely forgot I left it out last night.
Every muscle in my body goes rigid. Not because she's looking through it. But because I know exactly which page it's open to.
For one impossible second, I consider backing away.
Pretending I never came upstairs. Pretending I can somehow put twenty years back into the box I'd kept them in.
But then Willa speaks, so quietly, so intensely sad, I almost don't hear her. “You… you knew me.”
It’s not a question, but rather a realization. She turns slowly, the photograph still trembling between her fingers.
Those bright green eyes I've spent weeks falling into search my face like they're looking for someone they don't recognize anymore.
"You knew who I was,” she repeats. “And you never said anything.”
I let out a slow breath.
"I did." How could I not? I knew I had played with the Hartley girl as a kid in those orchards. When we moved here and opened Calder Cider, I knew exactly who she was.
Silence stretches between until it feels almost physical, like melting taffy being pulled in webs between us.
She looks back down at the photograph. Then at me again. "Why didn't you tell me?"
The question lands harder than any accusation could have. Because I don't have a good answer.
Only an honest one. "I kept waiting for the right moment."
A sad little laugh escapes her. "And somehow there never was one?”
"I guess I didn’t think it mattered?” I say, rubbing the back of my neck. My pulse is thudding harder than it should be, like I'm a kid back in the orchard again, bracing for that apple to come flying at my nose.
My eyes drift to the scrapbook, and my chest tightens.
"My mom kept everything," I say, softer now.
"Every clipping, every photo, every little thing she thought might matter someday. You and I played in the orchard together that first autumn when we visited. And my mom kept teasing and telling my dad that you were my future wife. So when I told you that… you got mad and threw an apple at my face.”
Willa lowers her gaze to the photograph again. To the little girl with crooked braids. The little boy with a bandage across his nose.
I swallow, suddenly aware of how exposed I feel, like I've handed her something fragile and I'm just waiting to see if she'll drop it.
“Oh yeah,” she whispers and drags her fingers across the picture. “I do remember that. I broke your nose.”
I can't help smiling. "You had one hell of an arm."
She looks horrified. “I got grounded for two weeks after your family left.”
"You cried harder than I did,” I chuckle.
She laughs briefly, then silence settles once again in my bedroom. It’s softer this time as she traces the edge of the photograph with her thumb. “I still don’t get why you didn’t tell me we knew each other.”
"I wanted to tell you, but..." The words trail off before I can find a way to finish them that doesn't sound pathetic.
Willa waits, not jumping in to rescue me from the silence. She just stands there, the photograph still in her hands, looking at me with an expression that hurts worse than if she'd been angry.
"But what?" she asks quietly.
I drag a hand over the back of my neck. "I told myself I'd mention it after the blind taste test." A humorless laugh slips out of me, dry and hollow, scraping at my throat.
"But you didn't."
"No." The admission settles between us, thick and uncomfortable, and I can feel the heat of it creeping up the back of my neck.
I let out a slow breath, trying to steady the tightness in my chest. "You started looking at me like I was just Brooks. Not your competition. Not as the little boy whose nose you broke. Not through decades of history. I kind of liked that. That we were creating a new sort of history between us.” The confession hangs between us.
"I liked getting to know the woman you'd become before either of us had to remember the kids we used to be. "
She studies me for a long moment, and I can almost see the thoughts rearranging themselves behind her eyes.
Like she's pulling every conversation we've had off a shelf and looking at it from a different angle.
"The problem is every time we talked..." Her voice is quiet now. "You were keeping this secret from me.”
I nod.
"The pie judging."
I nod again.
"The apple tasting."
Another nod.
"When I came to work here..."
"Yeah."
She lets out a slow breath and looks away, shaking her head more to herself than to me. "I thought we were getting to know each other at the same pace."
The words hit somewhere just beneath my ribs.
"I thought that with every story you learned about me..." She presses the scrapbook closed with careful hands. "I was learning one about you, too."
"You were—"
"No." She finally looks back at me. "I wasn't." There's no anger in her voice and somehow that hurts more. Her brow furrows. “Wait a minute… When I broke your nose, did you lose your ability to smell?”
I wince as I nod, knowing she’s putting the pieces together faster than I’m ready for.
She presses her lips together, nostrils flaring. “So in the tiebreaker when they made us plug our noses…” Her voice falters as realization creeps in. "You couldn't smell anyway. You had a major advantage."
“I didn’t know Marcy was going to do that as the tiebreaker,” I try to reason with her.
“But you didn't think to say anything, either,” she snaps.
"I didn't think—"
“You didn’t think what? That it mattered?” she interrupts, using my own words from earlier against me. She crosses her arms. “What else have you determined I don’t need to know?” The question lands like a punch.
I close my eyes for half a second. "I never lied to you. I've spent twenty years learning to trust everything except smell. I know I had an advantage, but are you honestly telling me that you wouldn’t have used it in my shoes as well?”
She closes her eyes for a moment. When she opens them again, the hurt is still there but it’s a little softer. "I believe you." Relief starts to loosen something in my chest… then she finishes. "But I still wish you had trusted me enough to tell me."
The relief disappears just as quickly. She carefully sets the scrapbook back on my dresser. "I need some time."
"Willa..."
"I know why you did it." She gives me a sad, tired smile. "I even think part of me understands." She reaches for her purse, holding it against her chest. "But understanding something..." Her fingers tighten around the leather strap. "...isn't the same as being okay with it."
Before I can find the words to stop her, she's already walking toward the door.
I don't follow.
Because for the first time since I met Willa Hartley...
I know chasing her would only make her leave faster.