3. The Fall Festival
Chapter Three
THE FALL FESTIVAL
Harvest Days has been one of my favorite weekends for as long as Owen and I have been together.
The festival takes over the courthouse square of a small town about twenty-five minutes away, where brick sidewalks wind past old storefronts decorated with pumpkins and mums, and every third booth seems to sell candles, maple syrup, cider, or hand soaps shaped like leaves.
Owen used to complain about carrying my bags while eating a sack of kettle corn almost as large as his torso, but he always came, so when I see the banner online, I turn my laptop toward him. “Harvest Days is next weekend.”
He’s eating cereal over the kitchen sink, a habit I’ve disliked for eleven years and have given up trying to cure. “Already?”
“September happens every year.”
“Smartass.”
“We should go Saturday.”
His expression changes. “I’m working.”
“Since when?”
“Couple of guys are out,” he says. “I picked up part of a route.”
“Okay. Sunday?”
He rinses the bowl. “I’m going to be exhausted Sunday.”
“We could go for just a couple of hours.”
“Mel.”
“What?”
“I don’t really want to spend my only day off walking around looking at pumpkins and overpriced crafts.” When I stare at him, he says, “What?”
“We always go.”
“It’s basically the same thing every year.”
“You love the kettle corn,” I say.
“I can buy kettle corn at Walmart.”
“That’s not the same, and you know it.”
He smiles faintly and kisses my forehead. “Go with somebody from work.”
The dismissal isn’t cruel, which somehow makes it more disappointing. He isn’t trying to take away something I enjoy; he simply doesn’t want to bother.
I text my coworker Connie: Harvest Days Saturday?
She responds almost immediately: YES. My husband says he’d rather schedule a colonoscopy.
Saturday is beautiful, sunny but cool enough to make the first hints of autumn feel real, and for two hours I forget everything odd about the previous few weeks.
Connie and I sample maple candy, buy cinnamon soap neither of us needs, and pose beside an inflatable scarecrow because she insists the resulting photograph will be hilarious.
I’m home before three. Owen arrives after six and drops onto the couch looking tired.
“How was work?” I ask.
“Busy.”
“The festival was good.”
He smiles. “Did you buy half the town?”
“Only a quarter.”
He smiles, and I don’t think twice about it until three days later, when Connie leans around the divider between our desks at lunch.
“Oh my God, they posted us,” she says.
“Who?”
“Harvest Days.” She’s laughing as she holds out her phone. “The scarecrow photo.”
“I hate you.”
She sends me the link, I open the festival page, and there we are. Connie looks delighted, and I look like I’m involved in a personal dispute with the scarecrow.
I laugh and keep scrolling through photographs of children painting pumpkins, dogs wearing bandanas, couples holding caramel apples, and families standing beneath the Harvest Days banner.
There’s a wide photo of the cider tent, and I almost scroll past it, but something snags my eye. As I enlarge the image, the world goes oddly silent.
Owen stands near the left edge. Bree is beside him. His hand rests at her waist, and her body angles toward his. She’s looking up at him, smiling.
My eyes shoot toward reception before I can stop them. Bree is still sitting there, head bent over her phone, one ankle hooked behind the other as if this is an ordinary day and she isn’t smiling up at my husband on the screen in front of me.
I look back at my phone and stare at the picture until it blurs. My brain tries to make the image into something innocent, but there isn’t enough ambiguity to work with. Owen is looking down at her, and the hand on her waist isn’t accidental or necessary.
“Mel?” Connie’s voice sounds distant.
I enlarge the photo further. Owen’s wearing the brown henley I bought him for his birthday. Bree has on a pale pink sweater, jeans, and boots. They look like a couple.
“Melanie?”
I turn the phone toward Connie, keeping it low between us, and her eyes go wide immediately. Her gaze flicks past me toward Bree before returning to the screen. After she takes it in, I keep scrolling because apparently I enjoy the sick feeling in my stomach.
Another picture shows Bree laughing while Owen leans close to her.
Connie sits down beside me. “Could they have just run into each other?”
“He was working.”
“Oh.”
“He told me he was working,” I clarify.
Connie’s eyes dart toward the front desk again. Bree hasn’t looked over, but suddenly every sound she makes, the tap of her keyboard, the scrape of her spoon against the yogurt cup, seems impossibly loud.
“He didn’t want to come with me,” I whisper, and the words hurt more than I expect. “He said it was pumpkins and overpriced crafts.”
I’m grateful when she doesn’t offer meaningless reassurance. I keep swiping but don’t find any other pictures of them.
After a moment, Connie rolls her chair closer to mine and lowers her phone beneath desk level. “I follow her on Instagram,” she says. “There’s a picture from Saturday.”
“Show me.”
“Mel—”
“Please.”
She hands over her phone. In the photo, Bree is standing beside a shiny coffee vendor trailer with one knee bent and a paper cup in her hand, smiling at whoever is taking the picture. At first, that’s all I see, and then Connie enlarges the window behind her.
Owen’s reflection is perfectly clear. He’s the one holding the phone.
I look over at Bree again, sitting at her desk. She’s laughing quietly at something on her screen, and for one furious second I wonder whether Owen sent it to her.
I’m certain they didn’t have a chance meeting at the Harvest Days festival. He took her there, or met her there.
For a second, I wonder how he could have risked running into me. Then I remember the location sharing on our phones, something we turned on years ago because of his delivery schedule. He could have known exactly when Connie and I left.
Either way, he spent part of Saturday wandering around with Bree after telling me he’d be working and refusing to go with me because the festival bored him.
The hand on Bree’s waist should be the thing that breaks me. Instead, it’s the festival. He didn’t hate pumpkins or crafts or cider; he simply didn’t want those things with me anymore.
“Do you want to go home?” Connie whispers, watching Bree rather than me now. “You don't have to sit here with her.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“You shouldn’t be here if?—”
The front door opens, and Bree looks up. So do I.
Owen walks into the office with a stack of packages and starts to smile, but the expression disappears when he sees my face.
My body moves before my brain tells it to, and I find myself standing.
“Mel?” Owen says.
“Come with me,” I say.
He looks at Bree, and that glance tells me more than his words ever could.
I head out into the hallway, and after a second, he follows.