4. Sadie
SADIE
I had the housing off and my hands inside the mechanism before the sun cleared the trees. The pump was grinding again, that hollow rattle I'd been hearing for three weeks, the one that meant metal touching metal where it shouldn't.
The cidery was cold at this hour. I'd left my jacket up at the house.
I worked the seal loose with my fingers and felt along the edge where the friction was worst. The housing was cast, the kind they'd stopped making in the seventies. When it gave out completely there'd be nothing to replace it with.
I'd told Roland it was failing. Earlier that week, standing in my own kitchen. He'd barely looked up.
So I was keeping it going myself. With what I had.
The bearing was scoring the inside, a hairline groove but deep enough to catch under my thumbnail when I ran it along the wall. I cleaned it out with the edge of a screwdriver and packed grease into the gap, more than it needed, enough to buy another week before the friction ate through it again.
My hands were black with it by the time I got the seal back on.
I'd driven down to one of his vineyards with a question I can't remember now, and he'd seen the stains on my fingers and wanted to know where they came from. We'd stood there talking while the afternoon burned down, and I'd forgotten why I'd come.
He'd been standing up here on my father's ridge the day I said yes.
I wiped my palms on my jeans. The grease smeared darker across the denim. I'd scrub it out later with the pumice soap I kept over the utility sink, but it wouldn't all come off. It never did.
The pump hummed when I tested it. Smooth. For now.
The first time I met him I had crushed apples on my hands and he asked me about it until the sun went down over the water. Nine years later I was asking him for a Sunday morning, and I'd already offered to give half of it back.
I walked the high row after I got the pump running again.
The Wickson crabs had turned. I could see it from twenty feet out, the way the sun hit them differently when they'd crossed over. I pulled one down and gave it a twist. The stem separated clean.
I bit into it. Sharp, tart, but the sugar was starting to edge in underneath. Another three days and they'd be past it.
I walked the rest of the block, checking as I went. Same story all the way down. The early ones had come in harder this year, pushed by the heat we'd had in the summer, and now they were all moving at once.
Ilse found me at the end of the second row.
"Monday," I said.
She pulled out her phone and started texting.
I didn't have to explain it. She'd been picking here long enough to know that when the Wicksons moved, everything moved. We had ten acres to clear and two weeks of storage to make the schedule work, but it all started with the first variety that came ripe.
Monday morning. First light.
I kept walking while she texted the crew. The Ashmeads were holding, maybe another week in them. The Roxbury Russets weren't even close. But the Wicksons had to come off now or we'd lose them, and once you brought people in, you kept them working.
By the time I got back to the loading dock, Ilse had gone up to the house. I could see her through the kitchen window with the landline tucked against her shoulder, writing something down.
The day was set. Twenty people on the clock, the whole season about to start.
I liked this. Knowing the shape of it before anyone else did. Knowing I was right.
October stretched out in front of me now, no longer a month but a map — the Wicksons first, the Ashmeads behind them, the Russets at the end if the weather held. I could see all of it from here.
I went back to the press to make sure the bearing would hold.
I pulled my phone out when I got to the press.
Still nothing.
He'd answered the Sunday question Wednesday evening, three words that came in six hours after I'd asked. But the first one—what time he thought he'd be home—was still sitting there, three days old and unanswered.
I could see the read receipt underneath it. He'd opened it that same afternoon.
I scrolled up. The thread with the estate attorney had a timestamp from an hour ago. The one with his distribution manager showed a reply at noon.
He was answering. Just not me.
I locked the screen and set the phone down on the workbench.
He'd been up at four every morning this week. I'd seen it myself—heard the shower running before my alarm, seen the kitchen light on from the bedroom when I came downstairs. He was running on four hours of sleep, maybe less, and the Hendry deal had more in it than anyone had told him it did.
The deal closed Monday. Same day the crew was coming in.
I didn't need him here for the harvest. I'd run it without him before.
But I wanted him anyway.
I picked the phone back up.
I opened a new message and typed it before I could stop myself.
*I don't know how to get your attention any more. I don't even know when I stopped being able to. Tell me what I'm supposed to do and I'll do it.*
I stared at the words. They terrified me. It was the most exposed I'd been with him in years, and it was just sitting there waiting for me to take it back.
I didn't take it back.
I hit send and watched the message disappear up into the thread. Delivered. Read.
I set the phone on the workbench, screen up, and turned back to the press.
The filter screens needed changing before Monday. I pulled the first one and held it under the light, checking for tears or buildup.
It looked fine.
I put it back and pulled the second one. Also fine.
My phone didn't buzz.
I checked the third screen, squinting at the mesh like I could see something wrong if I just looked harder. There was nothing wrong with it. I knew that before I pulled it.
I went back to the first screen.
My hands wouldn't settle. I kept glancing at the workbench, at the phone lying there with the screen dark now, no notification waiting.
I'd asked him for the whole thing. Not a smaller version, not something easy to ignore. I'd asked him to tell me what I was doing wrong and I'd told him I'd fix it.
And now I was standing here with a filter screen in my hands, staring at nothing, waiting for him to answer.
I forced myself back to the work. Pulled the fourth screen, inspected it, put it back. Started over with the first.
I wasn't doing it right. I wasn't doing any of it right.
But I was doing it anyway, because the work was there and the waiting had to happen somewhere.
My phone buzzed on the workbench.
I had it in my hand before I realized I'd moved.
The message was there, his name at the top of the screen.
*Can't do this today, I'm in with Hendry until it's done. Margo's looking at dates for a fortnight somewhere once the harvest is over — she'll send you options. We'll be fine.*
I read it twice.
A fortnight somewhere. Once the harvest was over.
Margo was looking at dates. She'd send me options.
I set the phone down.
There was no apology. Nothing about tonight or tomorrow or any day that wasn't weeks away. Nothing that answered what I'd actually asked him.
He thought we'd be fine.
I looked at the press, at the filter screens I'd pulled and checked three times each for no reason except to keep my hands busy while I waited.
I pulled the next screen and set it beside the others. They were all clean. I'd known they would be.
I looked out across the yard, toward the slope that dropped away to the lake. The light was starting to go soft, the kind of late-afternoon haze that meant the day would hang on for hours yet.
I'd given him thirty acres. Not all at once — I wasn't stupid about it. One parcel at a time, across nine years, every one of them sold to fund what he was building across the lake. I knew what I'd handed over. I could still walk the boundaries of every piece.
And what had I gotten back?
The loan when my father died. The insurance, nine years of it.
That he'd never told me to sell the ridge.
That he came home every night. The house.
The vacations. The cars. The dinners where I sat beside him and smiled at people whose names I'd forget by morning.
That my cidery was still standing after all these years.
All of it was true.
But I hadn't asked for the house. I'd asked for a Sunday, and gotten another time.
I'd asked for a minute, and gotten a glass put in my hand that he'd never picked up.
I'd asked for five minutes to taste what I'd made, and gotten *leave it out, I'll have it later.
* I'd asked for a morning, and gotten a message.
Nine years. He'd never tasted my cider. Not once.
I pressed my palms flat against the edge of the workbench. The metal was cool under my hands.
The fortnight would come. And then there'd be something after that. Spring would be too busy. Summer would have the wrong schedule. Fall would bring the harvest again.
There was always going to be a next thing. That was the part I'd never let myself finish thinking.
I looked at the phone. The screen was still dark.
I could've typed something back. I could've said fine, or thank you, or we'll talk later. I could've told him the picking started Monday and I hoped the deal went well.
I didn't answer him. It was the first thing I'd ever kept.
The phone stayed dark. No second message. No follow-up. He wasn't waiting for a reply because he didn't know one was missing. He was in with Hendry, or looking at contract language, or standing in the cellar going over the close.
Nine years, and I'd never held anything back. I'd handed him everything the second he needed it, sometimes before.
This time I hadn't.
And it changed nothing at all.
I straightened, wiping my palms on my jeans. The screens could wait. The yard was quiet, the last of the light catching on the equipment by the barn.
Asking hadn't worked. It never had.
So I'd go to him instead. Tomorrow. I'd take something with me.
I turned back toward the house.