Willa
The first thing I notice is that the Calders interrupt each other constantly.
Not rudely as much as… naturally. Like it's a language they've spent their whole lives perfecting. One I've never had the chance to learn, growing up without siblings of my own. I find myself watching the brothers carefully. Their easy teasing, the unspoken understanding, even the way Brooks knows to pass the salt and pepper immediately to Evan and slide the hot sauce toward Jace who douses his potatoes liberally with it. Even though my parents and grandfather and I all know each other well, this is different. Maybe it’s because there’s no generational gap. Maybe it’s the fact that all three were raised in the same house, with the same parents.
But the dynamic is both strange and quietly fascinating.
"...I'm telling you, raccoons are evolving," Jace says around a mouthful of potatoes.
"They're absolutely not evolving," Brooks replies with an eye roll, reaching across the table to steal the butter before Jace can drown another biscuit. “Scrumpy just had babies. That’s all. If anything, it explains why her appetite was so insatiable for a while there.”
"No,” Jace says. “They're organized. I bet there will be another family of racoons here next year, too.”
Evan gives his youngest brother a look. "Of course there will. That’s how it works when there are babies. The babies will grow up and have babies of their own.”
"See?! They're unionizing."
I snort into my cider, the laugh slipping out before I can stop it and the table goes silent as three sets of eyes swing to look at me. For half a second I wonder if I've broken some unspoken family rule.
Then Jace points his spoon at me triumphantly. "See? Willa agrees.”
“Willa does not agree,” I correct through another laugh. "I just think you say things with an alarming amount of confidence."
"I've found that's half the battle,” Jace says, stabbing a piece of chicken with his fork.
"The other half?" I ask.
"Finding someone willing to believe me,” he says with a wink. This man winks a lot… he must think it’s charming. Maybe it is to some women.
"Has that ever happened?" I challenge him.
He considers it. "...Not with these two.”
Even Evan smiles at that. It's subtle. Barely more than the corner of his mouth tipping upward before he hides it behind another bite of chicken.
I catch myself studying the three brothers across the table.
They all carry traces of each other, like someone started with the same sketch and changed the details as they went. The same blue eyes. The same square jaw. The same easy height that makes every doorway look just a little too small.
But that's where the similarities end.
Jace smiles with his entire face, bright and effortless, his sandy hair refusing to stay in any one direction. He reminds me of golden retrievers and summer camp counselors and every boy who somehow talked his way out of trouble before anyone remembered they were supposed to be mad.
Evan is quieter. Sharper somehow. Darker hair than Jace, straighter posture, every movement deliberate, like he's already considered six possible outcomes before deciding to reach for the salt.
If Brooks is the heart of Calder Cider and Jace is its personality, Evan is the blueprint keeping the whole place standing.
And then...
There's Brooks.
Sitting at the head of the table with his sleeves rolled to his forearms, absentmindedly tearing off a piece of biscuit while listening to Jace's increasingly ridiculous theory about highly intelligent raccoons.
The firelight from the living room catches the darker strands in his hair, and every now and then he laughs under his breath—not loudly, not looking for attention, just because his brother has said something genuinely funny.
It's unfair how handsome he is when he isn't trying.
Made even more unfair that he has no idea.
He glances up, catching me staring and one eyebrow lifts. This time, for the first time, I don't look away.
Instead, I take another bite of potatoes like I'd been looking at him for perfectly normal, non-heart-rate-altering reasons.
His mouth curves into the smallest, most knowing smile. “Careful,” Brooks says, his voice low enough that it threads beneath Jace and Evan’s bickering. “You keep looking like that, they’ll think you’re enjoying yourself.”
I blink, heat rushing up my neck. “I am eating chicken and listening to your brother build a conspiracy theory around raccoons. Enjoyment feels like a generous term.”
“But… you did laugh.”
“I have a condition.”
“Ah, that’s right. The gas.”
I point my spoon at him. “Don’t steal my jokes.”
His smile deepens, and I have to look down at my plate because looking at Brooks Calder across a dinner table, in the warm glow of his cabin, while wearing his sweatshirt and eating food he made, feels like accidentally walking into a future I have no business imagining.
Jace groans. “I’m being ignored. This is elder abuse.”
“You’re the youngest,” Evan says.
“Emotionally, I contain multitudes.”
“You contain potatoes,” Brooks says. “On your shirt.”
Jace looks down. “That’s from earlier.”
“Dinner started fifteen minutes ago.”
“Exactly. It’s from fifteen minutes earlier.”
I laugh again, and this time I don’t even try to stop it. Maybe that’s the dangerous part. Not Brooks touching my waist in the rain. Not his thumb brushing dirt from my cheek. Not the way he looks at me sometimes like he’s reading a page of my diary I forgot I’d left open.
This. The ease. The way this table feels loud and warm and lived-in, the way the rain taps at the windows while the fire breathes softly from the living room, the way the Calders fill empty space without trying.
At home, family dinner is love too, but it’s quieter.
Smaller. Me, Dad, Patty, Grandpa—four points of a compass that always knows the true north.
This is different. Messier. More kinetic. Like love … with elbows.
My gaze drifts to the framed photo on the sideboard near the kitchen. I noticed it earlier but didn’t let myself stare.
Now I do.
A man and woman sit on the hood of an old truck beneath a tree, both laughing at something outside the frame.
Behind them, three boys stand beneath apple trees, sunburned and gangly, each holding donuts like trophies.
The youngest has frosting on his chin. The oldest looks like he’s already over whatever chaos preceded the picture.
The middle boy—Brooks with his dark hair, serious eyes, and he wears the same stubborn set to his mouth, even back then.
Something tugs at the back of my mind, faint as a thread caught on a nail.
“Those are your parents?” I ask quietly. “Have they seen the orchard yet?” The table stills with my question. Not dramatically. Not enough that someone walking by would notice. But I feel it all the same, the subtle shift in the room, like everyone has adjusted their breathing at once.
Brooks follows my gaze. “Yeah, those are our parents.” His voice is even. Too even. And it doesn’t escape me how none of the guys answer the second question I asked. I immediately feel terrible for bringing it up.
Evan softens first, all his harsh edges dimming into something gentler. “Mom hated that picture.”
“Nah, she loved that picture,” Jace says.
“She said Dad looked like he’d just lost a fight with a lawn mower.”
“Well.. he usually did.”
A smile ghosts across Brooks’s mouth, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“They look happy,” I say.
“They were,” Brooks answers.
Just that. Two words. But they land with the weight of a fallen tree. Were. Past tense.
Jace leans back in his chair, turning his spoon between his fingers. “That was taken here, actually.”
I glance at him. “Here?”
“Not here here, on this land,” he says. “But here in Orchard Falls. We used to come every October when we were kids. Mom loved this town. Dad loved Hartley’s cider donuts.”
My heart gives a strange little knock.
Hartley’s.
Brooks’s gaze cuts to Jace, sharp enough that even I catch it.
Jace freezes, then winces. “Was that supposed to be a secret?”
“No,” Brooks says, but his jaw says otherwise.
Evan sighs and reaches for his cider. “We came here for years. Before any of this. Before Calder Cider was anything more than an idea our dad jotted onto a napkin.”
I look around the cabin again—the quilt, the fire, the boots by the door, the pot still warm on the stove—and suddenly the shape of this place changes. It is no longer just a rival orchard built down the road from mine. It is not only sleek branding and clever coffee and high-density planting.
It’s grief with beams and windows.
It’s memory turned into infrastructure.
It’s three brothers trying to build something solid out of the pieces their parents left behind.
My throat tightens, but I force a small smile at Brooks. “I didn’t know,” I say.
Brooks looks at me then, and something in his expression shifts. Not defensive exactly. Not embarrassed. More like he’s deciding whether to close a door or leave it cracked. “Most people don’t. We were just tourists, you know? None of the locals really remembered us.”
“But we remembered all of you,” Evan adds.
Jace, apparently allergic to silence, clears his throat. “Dad always said he’d open a cider place someday.”
Evan’s gaze drops to his bowl. “He said a lot of things.”
“He meant them,” Jace says.
“I didn’t say he didn’t,” Evan adds, gentler.
The quiet that follows is softer this time, worn around the edges.
Brooks looks over at the fireplace. “That’s them on the mantle,” he says. “When the time is right, we’ll scatter their ashes here on the property. That way they can fulfill their dream of moving to Orchard Falls and opening a cider brewhouse… at least in part.”
The words are simple, but they undo me anyway. Because I know legacy. I know what it is to inherit more than land. I know what it feels like to have other people’s dreams planted in your soil, to wake every morning and wonder if you’re watering them right.
But until this moment, I had only thought of Brooks as someone building against me. I hadn’t let myself consider that he was building toward someone else. Toward two someones who aren’t here to see it.
Rain slides down the windows in silver rivers. The fire pops softly in the other room, a tiny burst of sparks. Outside, the orchard bends beneath the storm, branches shivering, roots holding.
“I’m sorry,” I say. It isn’t enough. It never is.
But Brooks looks at me like he understands everything I mean beneath it. “Thank you.”
Jace reaches for another biscuit. “Anyway, Mom would’ve loved you.”
Brooks groans. “Jace.”
“What? She would have.”
“I am begging you to develop a filter.”
“I have one. It’s decorative.”
I laugh before I can stop myself, even with the ache still lodged behind my ribs.
Evan’s mouth tilts. “He’s not wrong, though… about Mom. She would have loved you.” I look at him, surprised. He shrugs like admitting softness causes him physical pain. “She liked competent women.”
“Ah,” I say. “Then yes, she would’ve adored me.”
Brooks laughs. Not under his breath this time. The sound rolls through the kitchen, warm and unguarded, and something inside me loosens in response. It twists in my chest, how badly I want to hear it again.
After dinner, I insist on helping clean up even though Brooks tries to refuse.
“You cooked,” I say, taking my plate to the sink. “I clean.”
“You’re a guest,” he counters.
“Actually, I’m your competition.”
Eventually, Jace and Evan disappear toward the living room under the deeply suspicious excuse of “checking the fire,” leaving me at the sink beside Brooks, because apparently subtlety is not a Calder family trait.
The kitchen is quieter without them.
Not silent. The rain is still there. The fire still snaps. Somewhere in the next room, Jace says something and Evan answers with a flat “no,” which makes me smile into the dishtowel.
Brooks washes. I dry.
It should be ordinary. It is ordinary.
Our shoulders brush every time he hands me a plate. His hands are strong and efficient beneath the water, sleeves pushed up, forearms damp. I try not to notice this, but fail spectacularly.
“This is good,” I say finally.
“The roast chicken?”
“No, this.” I gesture vaguely with the towel. “All of it. What you’ve built here.”
He goes still for the briefest second before reaching for another bowl. “You don’t have to say that.”
“I know I don’t.” His eyes lift to mine. I hold them, even though it costs me something. “I mean it.”
Something passes between us then, quiet and uninvited. Not banter. Not rivalry. Not the easy spark of two people who like arguing because it gives them an excuse to stand too close.
This is different. This feels like recognition. The kind that reaches past what you want someone to see and touches what you can’t quite hide.
Brooks’s voice is low when he says, “Thank you.”
My fingers tighten around the towel. “You’re welcome.”
Another plate passes between us. This time his fingertips brush mine and linger just long enough to make my breath forget itself.
From the living room, Jace calls, “If you two are kissing in there, please be advised I left my cider on the counter and I’m coming in to grab it!”
I jerk back so fast I nearly drop the plate
Brooks closes his eyes. “I’m going to murder him.”
I wander back toward the sideboard while he pours more cider, drawn again to the old photograph. The three boys beneath the trees. Their parents laughing on the truck. The sunlit rows behind them.
Hartley & Sons rows, apparently.
My rows.
A strange prickle moves through me.
Not memory exactly. More like the feeling of walking into a room and forgetting why you came in. Something familiar buried too deep to surface.
When I look over, Brooks is watching me with an expression I can’t read. Something tugs again. A flash of red apple skin. A boy’s shout. The sharp, panicked sting of trouble.
Then, the memory is gone.
“What?” Brooks asks.
“I don’t know.” I shake my head, letting my hand fall from the frame. “It feels like I … like I can almost remember you. This little boy version of you, I mean.” I brush my fingers over the glass frame.
His gaze holds mine for a long moment. “Maybe you will.”
The words settle strangely. Softly. Like a seed pressed into soil.
“Did we ever meet when you visited?”
Brooks opens his mouth to answer me when from the living room, Jace shouts. “Please tell me someone remembered to make dessert!”
“Anything but apples,” Evan groans.
The moment breaks and Brooks chuckles, shaking his head. “I have peach cobbler and ice cream,” he says.
I laugh as Brooks steps around me to pull a dish out of the refrigerator. As he spoons peach cobber into the bowls, my eyes drift back to the photograph one last time.
Three boys.
Apple trees.
And a life that brushed against mine years ago without leaving a name behind.