Chapter 2
two
JOAN
There was a kid standing over my shoulder.
I wasn’t sure when he’d arrived or how long he’d been there, but he stood quietly, about six feet away, watching as I worked on the conveyor belt.
The machinery had been acting up, sensitive to too much weight on the ramp. I’d been waiting for some downtime to take a look inside and tune up the conveyor that delivered the apples to the press. Today had been good enough.
It was early November. The u-pick apple season was over, and we had another week before the Christmas tree lot went up. So there was a bit of a lull in tourist traffic.
The kid shuffled more to the right to see around my elbow as I worked the crescent wrench around a stubborn bolt.
I hadn’t been in the presence of many children, save for the ones who visited the orchard.
Those interactions were often entertaining—you never knew what a kid was going to say—but they were typically fleeting.
I remembered the locals and regulars who frequented my family’s farm.
Connie Hixson brought her granddaughter every year to pick apples the last weekend in September.
I’d seen little Darla grow from a chubby-cheeked toddler to a surly preteen.
There were a few others who’d crossed my path regularly, too.
Amos Coates was a teenager who worked part-time at the orchard, and I liked him well enough.
But despite my inexperience with small children, even I could tell the kid lurking behind me was young. Not too young, though. He didn’t need diapers or anything. But he probably shouldn’t have been off on his own. He was, maybe, six or seven years old.
The bolt came loose so suddenly that it ricocheted out of the underbelly of the conveyor onto the dusty wooden planks beneath my feet. At the same time, the wrench slipped, causing my knuckle to bang painfully on the gears nearby.
I let out a sharp hiss rather than the curse word that had been ready under my tongue.
Instinctively, I clenched my fist, eyeing the bright crimson droplet welling on the knuckle of my right index finger.
The troublemaking bolt entered my periphery, held in a tiny, dirt-streaked palm like a silent offering.
And maybe that’s what it was about this kid .
. . I’d never been around one so quiet. Kids at the orchard were always wild and rambunctious, dashing through rows of apple trees and tumbling across the giant bounce pillow, volume ranging from earsplitting to migraine-inducing.
“Thanks,” I murmured, accepting the round piece of metal and placing it atop the unmoving belt.
“I can get a Band-Aid from my emergency kit, if you need one.” The voice was high and sweet, but oddly solemn for someone so small.
I didn’t know what an emergency kit was, but I was pretty sure adults were supposed to be the responsible ones. It had been a long time since anyone took care of me but me.
“Thanks,” I repeated, finally turning to face the boy. He was staring at the little bead of red on my finger, face pale. “But I can get a bandage from the office.” Instead of doing that, I pulled a handkerchief out of my pants pocket and wiped the blood away.
He blinked big blue eyes as if coming back to himself from a short mental vacation. Then he focused on my face.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“George,” he replied, gaze flicking toward my injury briefly.
“I’m Joan,” I offered.
George was motionless—another deviation from the children I typically saw. He wasn’t fidgeting or squirming. He was as still as a little statue. Maybe it had been the blood that had him rooted in place. He was free from the spell now, and yet he still wasn’t wiggling around.
He looked clean—for a kid—and healthy, a slight roundness in his face and limbs that I associated with youth and innocent indulgence. Regular desserts after dinner and snacks on demand. I wondered if George and his family had visited Knottsford Creamery downtown.
Speaking of family, my gaze strayed over the boy’s head, beyond the shaded roof of the open-air Apple House, to the berry patches and fields in the distance. I didn’t see any adults wandering around, looking for lost little boys.
“You’re a farmer,” he said suddenly, drawing my attention once more.
It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway. “I am. What are you?”
“An inconvenience,” he muttered.
I frowned. “Did someone call you that?”
“Gloria,” he replied offhandedly, with an accompanying eye roll that made him look like a tiny teenager.
I wondered if he even knew what the word meant. And why the hell someone had called a kid an inconvenience? Christ.
“Did you go to school to be a farmer?” George asked in his next breath.
“No, I didn’t. I learned from my father and my grandfather. We’re all farmers.”
The boy seemed to chew that over as I wondered how I was going to find his parents and considered what I’d do if I found out his mother’s name was Gloria.
“Do you think I could be a farmer?” The soft question drew me away from my fierce thoughts, a fictional argument already half formed in my mind with a hypothetical Gloria somewhere.
With slow movements, I shifted my body on the step stool to face the boy more fully. A serious question deserved serious consideration. I didn’t really know how to talk to kids, but this was how I’d want somebody to talk to me.
I held his gaze. “Well, do you like being outside?”
George nodded eagerly.
“Even when it’s rainy and muddy,” I pressed.
He kept right on nodding.
“Do you like working with your hands? Getting a little dirty, if need be?”
The boy’s eyes brightened, as if the idea that there could be a job where you were allowed to get dirty had never occurred to him, and he liked it. But he wasn’t smiling. In fact, I hadn’t seen a smile cross his stoic little face even once. But I hadn’t smiled either, so who was I to judge?
“Then I think you’d make a mighty fine farmer,” I told him.
In my limited experience with children, I assumed this pronouncement might get a grin out of him.
Both kids and adults liked it when you said what they wanted to hear.
It was a universal trait. And it was obvious, even to me—someone who was better with plants than I could ever be with people—that George wanted me to agree, to say he could be a farmer, too.
But the boy still didn’t smile. He did something better. He straightened and took a deep breath, like confidence was filling him up from the inside. Then he nodded once. “Okay.”
I waited, but he didn’t say more. My eyes, again, drifted over his shoulder in an effort to locate his family. But before I could push to stand and get the search underway, George’s watch beeped.
He sighed, eyes dropping to the little device on his wrist. I couldn’t tell if it was a fancy watch that received text messages or just an alarm that had gone off.
However, I did notice that he wasn’t wearing one of the bounce pillow bracelets that acted like an entry ticket for the most popular children’s attraction on the farm.
“Better go,” he muttered, clearly reluctant.
Concern had me frowning. “Do you need help finding your parents?”
He shook his head, dark hair swinging into his blue eyes briefly before he shoved it away. “Nope. Bye, Joan. Have a nice day.”
I stood as he trotted back out into the sunlight.
He didn’t circle back to the front of the Apple House, where most orchard visitors would be, gathered near the picnic tables, enjoying a freshly pressed cider or an apple hand pie.
George didn’t head in the direction of the giant bounce pillow either.
He crossed the grass all the way to the tractor path that led to my parents’ house.
I was willing to bet that if the little boy was walking that way, he was going to the rear of the property, where the trailers and production teams were setting up.
Sighing, I turned back to the conveyor belt.
He was probably with the movie people. It seemed about right that one of those Hollywood types would just let their child roam free, where he could get hurt or lost on someone else’s land.
Still, I hesitated, half tempted to go after the quiet little boy and make sure he found his way back safely. But soon, he was out of sight, and I was still very much a stranger.
I could feel myself frowning at the thought of what was to come.
For the majority of the next five months, there would be a film crew at the orchard.
Well, parts of the orchard. There were limitations and boundaries, minimal as they were.
But for the next few months, our land would host bigwigs from Hollywood as they filmed a major motion picture.
And wasn’t that just dandy?
Apparently, some hotshot director had visited our orchard a few years ago. She’d become enamored with Kirby Falls and the surrounding area and had written a script set right here in Western North Carolina.
On that front, I couldn’t really blame her.
The land was beautiful, and our town was friendly—practically designed to lure in helpless leafers who sought out tourist activities and beautiful autumn foliage.
I’d met more than a few new arrivals and retirees who’d settled here after a vacation or two.
But this was the first time a newcomer had brought their work with them.
Once the director, Della Stewart, had found someone willing to fund and produce her film, they’d approached us with an offer.
It had been generous enough to seriously consider.
In fact, it would allow my parents to retire a few years early.
And it more than made up for the business we’d lose out on by only opening to the public two days a week instead of four.