Chapter 2 #2
That gets me the laugh.
Full volume this time.
It is low and bright and over too quickly.
“With what?” she asks. “Branded lantern housings?”
“I was thinking pallet jacks.”
“You do have demonstrated competence.”
“I like to play to my strengths.”
She looks at me, and for one moment the entire orchard seems to recede behind that look.
Not disappear.
Nora would probably have me removed from the property if I romanticized an active work site into nonexistence.
But the noise becomes less important.
Her eyes are hazel. I missed that earlier because I was distracted by being ordered around.
They are greener near the center.
This is information I do not need.
I store it anyway.
Then Tessa appears through the cold-storage door carrying a paper bag that smells like cinnamon and hot oil.
“Emergency provisions,” she says.
Nora reaches for the bag. “For me?”
“No. You’ve already eaten two doughnut holes and a piece of cheddar you stole off a sampling tray.”
“That is slander.”
“I watched you.”
“Then it’s surveillance.”
Tessa hands the bag to me.
“One cider doughnut. Consider it compensation for emotional damages sustained while being mistaken for a person with a normal salary.”
I take it.
“It’s difficult, but I’m healing.”
“I knew you had courage.”
Nora reaches for the bag.
Tessa slaps her hand away.
“This is his.”
“I run the orchard events.”
“And I run food. Jurisdiction.”
Nora looks at me. “This is what happens when you let small governments form.”
“I founded one myself.”
“Yes, but yours has lawyers.”
“So does this one,” Tessa says. “Aunt Mae once watched three episodes of Judge Judy.”
“Practically the same thing.”
Tessa points at me. “See? He’s learning.”
She disappears again before Nora can retaliate.
I bite into the doughnut.
Warm apple, cinnamon sugar, crisp edge.
I stop walking.
Nora watches me with open amusement.
“Unfair,” I say again.
“I told you.”
“Why is this not in the campaign plan?”
“Because then I’d have to make enough for your entire crew,” Tessa calls from inside the building.
I look at Nora.
“Does she hear everything?”
“Only anything that might become gossip.”
“Useful skill.”
“Terrifying skill.”
We continue the walk.
By ten thirty, I know where guests can and cannot cross, which barn door sticks in damp weather, where Priya wants to put a product display, why Nora hates the fake apple tree, and which agency producer has already earned the privilege of being referred to as Clipboard Todd despite not being named Todd.
His actual name is Jeremy.
I do not ask.
At eleven twelve, a family from Massachusetts blocks a public path while attempting to photograph three children, a wagon, and approximately ninety apples.
Nora reroutes foot traffic around them without making the mother feel rushed.
At eleven twenty, she catches one of our crew about to run an extension cord across a walking route and redirects it before the cable hits the ground.
At eleven thirty-four, she hands an elderly man a chair before he admits he needs one.
She notices everything.
I notice her.
This is becoming a problem.
Landon notices me noticing her.
That is a separate problem, and one I refuse to make hers.
We finish near the farmstand just before noon.
Aunt Mae is still behind her bowl of brass leaves.
When she sees me, she taps the rim with one finger.
“You came back.”
“I said I would.”
“Men say many things in the vicinity of women and baked goods.”
Nora groans. “Please do not encourage her.”
I take out my wallet.
Cash.
Mae’s eyebrows rise.
“Prepared.”
“I had Priya stop at the market.”
Nora stares at me. “You sent a campaign operations director to get you eight dollars?”
“I sent her to get coffee for six people. She also broke a twenty.”
“That is marginally less appalling.”
I put eight dollars on the table.
Mae slides one brass leaf toward me.
“It’s five.”
“Nora said eight.”
“Nora was exploiting your wealth.”
“I respect local pricing.”
Mae pockets all eight.
Nora points at both of us. “This is why capitalism fails.”
I turn the little leaf over in my fingers. It is stamped with a simple vein pattern and punched at the stem for twine.
“What do I do with it?”
“Hang it on the Truth Maple with your sweetheart.”
“I don’t have one.”
Mae looks at Nora.
Nora looks at Mae.
I look at Nora because apparently I have lost the instinct for self-preservation.
“Don’t,” Nora says to her aunt.
Mae’s face is innocence perfected over nearly seven decades.
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Your eyebrows did.”
“They’re old. They move independently.”
I laugh.
Nora mutters something that sounds like “traitorous genetics” and reaches for the charm.
“Here. I’ll show you where tourists tie them so you don’t strangle a branch.”
Her fingers close over mine for half a second.
Warm.
Quick.
Completely ordinary.
My body treats it like breaking news.
She pulls her hand back first.
Her eyes flick to mine.
There.
Not just me.
Good.
Dangerous, but good.
My phone vibrates.
I already know I will hate whatever is on it.
I check anyway.
A message from Cameron.
Three words.
Don’t open Instagram.
I look at Nora.
She is still holding the brass leaf between two fingers.
“Bad news?” she asks.
“Old news.”
Something in her face softens.
“Those are sometimes worse.”
“Yes.”
Across the lawn, Landon is speaking to one of his crew, but his attention keeps drifting toward us.
Nora notices.
Her mouth tightens.
For a strange second, the symmetry is almost funny.
Her ex is standing thirty yards away.
Mine is apparently trying to materialize in Vermont through social media.
We have known each other for less than four hours.
I am already more interested in what Nora Bell is going to say next than in the story half the internet is trying to write about me.
That should concern me.
It does.
Not nearly enough.