Chapter Nineteen
Katrina
The ride out to the orchard was quiet. Over and over, I thought about Frankie’s revelation that it was Derek who had saved Hannah and attacked Richard. That hearing what he had done to Frankie sent him halfway across the country to beat the hell out of a man he had never met.
Who did that?
Someone dangerous.
“There it is!” Frankie squealed, bouncing in her seat.
Her excitement had me smiling. This was her first sleepover. I turned off Highway 80 onto a dirt road by the sign that read “Winslow Orchards” in faded green paint with a large hand-painted red apple behind the words.
The driveway stretched out in front of us for at least a quarter of a mile, maybe more.
The store came into view, and I could see the orchard spreading out on both sides.
Rows and rows of smaller trees, all perfectly lined up like soldiers, their branches mostly bare now, reaching up like dark fingers against the pale sky.
Without their leaves, I could see the structure of them, the way they’d been pruned and shaped over the years.
The driveway curved gently to the left, and as we followed it, I could see more of the orchard.
It was huge—way bigger than I’d imagined.
The trees seemed to go on forever, disappearing into the distance where the land rolled into gentle hills.
Nebraska was flatter than most places I’d seen, but the Winslow property had these subtle rises and falls that made the orchard look like it was breathing, like waves on a gray-brown ocean.
“Look at all those trees!” Frankie exclaimed
“Maggie must work really hard,” I said quietly as I thought about how young she was. How she was taking care of her siblings as well as running a business of this magnitude.
The driveway curved again, and suddenly we could see the house.
It was a big old farmhouse, two stories tall, painted white with green shutters that matched the sign out by the highway.
It had a wraparound porch with a swing on one end, and the house looked old but well-kept, like someone spent a lot of time making sure it didn’t fall apart.
Behind the house was a big red barn and several smaller outbuildings. Maggie’s pickup truck was parked near the barn, beside some kind of tractor or machinery I didn’t recognize. Everything looked organized and purposeful, like every single thing had its place and its job.
I’d never felt more inadequate than I did right now, seeing everything Maggie was responsible for and how she was holding it all together.
She was more than a decade younger than me, and all I had to show for my life was two failed relationships with men whose only goal had been to destroy me and my daughter.
“There’s Cami!” Frankie shrieked again, spotting her friend on the porch.
Cami, who was bundled up in a thick jacket, waved both arms over her head as if she were trying to flag down an airplane. Frankie waved back so hard she almost hit me in the face. She was out the door before I’d barely stopped the car.
“Frankie, wait—” I called, but it was pointless. Her focus was her new friend, and I smiled as they crashed into each other in a hug.
The girls were babbling quietly to each other when I finally caught up to them, carrying our overnight bags. Maggie came out of the house then, her long red hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt over a T-shirt that said “Winslow Orchards” with that same faded apple logo.
“Come on in,” Maggie said. “I just made some hot cider, and I thought we could all sit for a bit before the girls run off to cause chaos.”
“I heard that!” Cami said, but she was grinning.
We followed Maggie inside to the kitchen, and the first thing I noticed was the warmth and aroma of cinnamon and apples. Not just the temperature, but the kind of warmth from years of use. Decades of mothers and grandmothers, generations working together to make the home feel comforting.
My fingers ran along the edge of the table as I sat down, feeling the tiny nicks and grooves from all the meals served with love and the late-night conversations held over thousands of cups of hot coffee.
My eyes landed on the big farmhouse sink, deep and solid. There was a stack of dishes drying on the rack beside it—a symbol of a life well lived.
“Nox is in the barn,” Maggie said, settling into a chair that creaked under her weight. “He’s helping drain the irrigation lines. We’ve got to get everything winterized before the hard freeze comes.”
“How much longer do you have?” I asked, taking a mug of cider from Rhoda with a thank-you.
“Maybe a week, if we’re lucky,” Maggie said, and there was a note of urgency in her voice. “The forecast says we might get down into the teens by next weekend. We need to get the lines drained, the equipment stored, and the last of the canning finished before then.”
“You’re still canning?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Maggie said. “We’ve been at it for weeks.
Applesauce, apple butter, jams, dried apples.
We’ve got apples, peaches, and pears in cold storage that’ll last through March if we manage them right, but the ones that won’t keep that long, we’re processing now. It’s a race against time, honestly.”
I wrapped my hands around my mug of cider, feeling the warmth seep into my cold fingers.
“How much did you harvest this year?” I asked, taking a sip of the cider and closing my eyes as the warm cinnamon flavor washed over my tongue.
Maggie leaned back in her chair, and I could see her doing calculations in her head.
“About forty thousand pounds,” she said.
“Which sounds like a lot, but it’s actually down from last year.
We had a late frost in April that killed a lot of the blossoms, and then we didn’t get enough rain in July. The apples were smaller than usual.”
“Forty thousand pounds still sounds like a lot,” Frankie said.
“It is,” Rhoda chimed in. “And every single one of them had to be picked by hand, sorted, stored, and either sold fresh or processed. We’ve been working nonstop since September.”
“We’ve been working nonstop. You’ve been at the diner,” Cami teased her sister.
“And now you’re tired,” I said gently, as Rhoda playfully shoved Cami’s shoulder.
I couldn’t comprehend the amount of work Maggie and her siblings put in to run the orchard. It was inspiring, but I was also a little envious. They all knew what they wanted to do.
“Exhausted,” Maggie admitted with a laugh. “But we’re almost done. Once we finish the canning and get everything winterized, we can slow down a little. Winter is our quiet time—we still have to monitor the cold storage and sell apples, but it’s nothing like harvest season.”
“Maggie, can we do the canning now?” Cami asked. “You promised.”
“I did promise,” Maggie agreed. “All right, let’s make some applesauce. Frankie, you want to help?”
“Yes!” Frankie said immediately.
Maggie pulled out a basket of apples, a mix of varieties, and showed us how to peel, core, and slice them. She made it look easy, the peeler moving in smooth spirals, but when Frankie tried it, she ended up with chunks of peel and apple going everywhere.
“You’ll get better with practice,” Maggie said, not even looking up from her own apple. Her hands moved with the kind of efficiency that came from doing something a thousand times.
Cami was better at it than Frankie, but not by much. Rhoda was almost as fast as Maggie, her knife flashing as she sliced the peeled apples into chunks.
“How much applesauce do you make?” I asked, sitting at the table, watching them work.
“Hundreds of jars,” Maggie said. “We sell it at the farmer’s market and at the store out front.
People love homemade applesauce, especially around the holidays.
And it’s a good way to use up the apples that aren’t perfect for fresh eating—the ones with blemishes or bruises.
They taste just as good; they just don’t look as nice. ”
“Nothing goes to waste,” Rhoda added. “The apples that are too damaged even for applesauce, we give to a guy who makes cider. The really bad ones go to compost and feed the soil for next year.”
“It’s a whole cycle,” Maggie said. “Everything feeds back into everything else.”
They filled a huge pot with the sliced apples, added some water and sugar and cinnamon, and set it on the stove to cook. While it simmered, Maggie showed us the jars she’d prepared, dozens of them, all sterilized and ready to be filled.
“The key to canning is making sure everything is sterile,” she explained. “If you don’t do it right, the food can spoil or even make people sick. You’ve got to be diligent, follow the rules, and make sure the jars seal properly.”
“How long will the applesauce keep?” Frankie asked.
“A few years, maybe longer,” Maggie said. “We’ll sell most of it before then, but it’s nice to know it’ll keep. That’s the whole point of preserving—making the harvest last as long as possible.”
Frankie and Cami took turns stirring the apples as they cooked down, and the kitchen filled with the most amazing smell. Maggie showed them how to test if they were done: they should be soft enough to mash easily but not so cooked that they turned to mush.
“Some people like chunky applesauce, some like it smooth,” she explained. “We make both. The chunky stuff we just mash with a potato masher. The smooth stuff we run through a food mill.”
They spent the next hour filling jars with applesauce, wiping the rims clean, putting on the lids, and processing them in a big pot of boiling water.
Maggie explained each step carefully, making sure the girls understood why they were doing it.
Frankie hung on Maggie’s every word, and despite the twinge of jealousy, I loved seeing her learn new things.
“This is how people survived before refrigeration,” she said.
“Canning, drying, smoking, salting, all different ways to preserve food so you could eat in winter. We’re lucky we have cold storage and refrigeration now, but canning is still important.
It’s a way to add value to the apples, to turn them into something people will pay more for. ”
“How much do you sell a jar for?” I asked.
“Six dollars for a pint, ten for a quart,” Maggie said. “Which is way more than we’d get for the same amount of fresh apples. So it makes economic sense, even though it’s a lot of work.”
“Everything you do is a lot of work,” I said quietly.
Maggie shrugged. “That’s farming. But it’s good work. Honest work. And at the end of the day, I can look at a shelf full of applesauce jars and know that we made that, that it’ll feed people and bring in money and help us get through the winter.”
By the time they finished, they had three dozen jars of applesauce cooling on the counter, their lids making little popping sounds as they sealed. Maggie checked each one, pressing on the lid to make sure it didn’t flex.
“Perfect,” she said with satisfaction. “These are good.”
Dinner was simple but delicious: soup made from vegetables that had been canned earlier in the fall, and fresh bread that Maggie had made that morning. We all ate together at the big kitchen table, and it felt like being part of a big, chaotic, happy family.
Which reminded me…
“Maggie, Frankie and I were invited to spend Thanksgiving at the clubhouse in Diamond Creek. We’d love for you all to come with us if you don’t have plans,” I said.
“Please, Maggie?” Cami pleaded.
“I don’t know,” Maggie hesitated.
“I’ve met almost all of them,” Rhoda said. “They are a great bunch of guys.”
“Please, Maggie.” I reached forward and placed my hand over hers. “You are the only person I really know here. Don’t make me go alone.”
Maggie smiled and rolled her eyes. “Fine, we can go to the clubhouse for Thanksgiving.” Frankie and Cami cheered.
“But”— Maggie interrupted their celebration, holding up her finger, then pointing it at everyone around the table—“you are all helping me make pies next week to take with us. We will not show up empty-handed.”
The kids groaned, but Maggie and I chuckled because it didn’t come out quite as upset as they were trying to make it sound.