A small table rounded out the kitchen, tucked tightly against a bank of windows that looked out onto the back property line, with more trees in neat lines on the other side. On the end of the trailer was a snug living room with a worn but clean sofa. A peek under the cushions proved it to be a hide-a-bed. Next to the window, a folded blanket lay on the back of a slim recliner. It was spare but cozy.
“Where’s the TV?” Bass asked.
Isaac looked for a cabinet or spot where one could be hidden, but didn’t see one.
“I think we are sans TV for the summer.” Bass’s face fell in disappointment. “TVs are where you watch other people’s adventures. We’re going to be having our own.” Bass perked up a bit, but Isaac knew it would be a long summer, especially since the trailer wouldn’t have Wi-Fi either, per his request during his phone call with Einars.
Before going out to get their luggage, he stuck his head in the bedroom, which took up the back third of the house and contained a queen bed and a built-in dresser.
“Looks like you’ll be bunking with me, Sardine,” he said, giving Bass’s hand a little squeeze. “Let’s get our stuff.”
In one trip, they carried the couple of duffel bags and Bass’s backpack from the black Prius. Bass unzipped his bag and pulled out a green fuzzy object, setting it on the right pillow of the bed, his preferred sleeping side.
“Snarf make the trip okay?” Isaac asked.
“He’s a stuffed animal, he’s fine.” Bass rolled his eyes, but moved the dragon a bit farther from the bed’s edge before dumping the rest of the backpack’s contents out. Sprawled across the clean white comforter was his son’s life—everything he had deemed important enough to bring on their trip: a stack of baseball cards, books four and five in the Amulet series, his baseball glove and a baseball, a Mad Libs book they had bought somewhere in Kansas in which all nouns entered were either fart or butt, his iPad, and a handful of superhero action figures.
But Snarf was the prize possession, a gift from his mother, Paige, shortly after she and Isaac had divorced. It was a squishy green dragon with hidden pockets to keep secret treasures. Snarf’s pockets were filled with sticky notes written by both Isaac and Paige for Bass’s kindergarten lunch box during the last year of their marriage. Bass wasn’t aware that Isaac knew he’d kept them. Isaac had discovered them before Snarf got his first bath after falling in a mud puddle. Before tossing it into the washing machine, he’d dutifully checked all the pockets, each note a sad reminder of the year they tried to make it work even as Paige had slipped away. Some notes were in his precise print—simple reminders on how to spell their last name and that Q came after P in the alphabet, followed by a dozen Xs and Os to show his love. Paige’s notes were in a wobbly cursive, illegible to a six-year-old, but treasured all the same.
As Bass sorted his treasures and found them homes along the windowsills, Isaac dumped out the duffels onto the bed to organize their clothes in the dresser, careful not to let the envelope of papers, one of which was Paige’s death certificate, fall out. With a subtle glance to make sure Bass hadn’t seen, he closed the now-empty duffel and slid it under the bed. Bass was still too young.
• • • • •
After devouring the frozen pizza Isaac found in the freezer, Isaac and Bass tidied up the kitchen. With so little space, they would need to keep things clean, which wouldn’t be too difficult with the little they had brought with them.
“Time for bed,” Isaac said.
Bass slid the last dried plate into the cupboard and yawned.
“Not tired.”
“Dude, you just yawned big enough an ostrich could have run in and out of your mouth and you wouldn’t have noticed.” He paused, walking back toward the bedroom, knowing he was pulling Bass in his wake. “It’s been a long day, and tomorrow we actually have work to do.”
He opened the dresser drawer and pulled out Bass’s pajamas.
“I don’t want to work with her.” Bass crossed his arms.
“You have to. You broke the window and some of her equipment. Since you don’t have money, you need to work it off. Besides, you might even learn something.”
They both got into pajamas and went into the bathroom to brush their teeth. It had become their routine to do it together.
“She doesn’t like me.”
Isaac was a little worried about this, too. Sanna didn’t seem like the most warm and fuzzy person, but it would be good for Bass to learn how to interact with different types of people. He would make sure to spend some time with her, too, make sure the prickly woman was giving Bass a fair chance—or at least that was the level of interest he was willing to admit to himself tonight.
“She doesn’t know you.” He squirted toothpaste onto each of their toothbrushes.
“She’s really tall. As tall as you,” Bass said around the toothbrush in his mouth, spraying white foam onto the mirror.
Isaac smiled and wiped it off. He loved hearing Bass’s take on events. For some magical reason—or more likely the not-so-magical reason of trying to extend his bedtime—Bass always became more talkative at this time of night, and Isaac found it impossible to resist the conversation. It wouldn’t be long until the surly teen years, might as well soak up the conversation now. He spit out his toothpaste.
“I noticed.”
“Do you think she needs a ladder to pick apples?” Toothpaste foam dribbled out of his mouth as he spoke. Isaac resisted the urge to wipe his chin.
“You can ask her tomorrow. I bet she’d tell you.”
“What do you think about her?”
He wiped his mouth and held out the towel for Bass to do the same, buying some time before answering. His first thought was what he wouldn’t call her to his son: sexy, luminous, or even pretty. Those weren’t exactly the words he wanted, but she was undeniably attractive, the way an incoming storm could take your breath away with its ferocity and purpose. He couldn’t give that answer to Bass.
“I think she’s smart and knows how she likes to do things around here, so you’ll need to listen carefully and follow her instructions. Now into bed.”
After waiting as Bass slid under the covers and tucked Snarf into the crook of his arm, he covered them both with the comforter and turned to go out to the living room. He needed to check some messages on his phone—needed to send his mom something to placate her—and maybe start one of the well-worn paperbacks he had seen tucked into a cupboard.
“You aren’t coming to bed?” Bass asked, his voice tiny in the dim light. Isaac could hear the uncertainty in his voice. It was a new bed in a new place, and for the first time in three weeks, he had the space to stay up past Bass’s bedtime in a different room rather than turn out the motel room’s lights so he could fall asleep. Leaves rustled in the night breeze, and the occasional bug thwapped against the screen trying to get to the lights—the only sounds that broke through the blanket of quiet in this corner of the orchard.
He understood.
Bass had never gone this long without seeing his mom. Even with her roller-coaster emotions and frustrating highs and lows, she was the only mom he had, and he knew Bass missed her. That combined with the new and unfamiliar bed rattled his little boy’s courage. Of course Bass would want to keep his dad as close as possible.
“I am.” He took a quick glance at his phone to confirm there wasn’t anything that couldn’t wait until morning. “Just turning off the lights and locking up.”
When Isaac lay down next to Bass, he was barely settled before Bass’s little body and lanky limbs were draped all over Isaac—one arm still clutching Snarf, the other wrapped around Isaac’s arm so he couldn’t sneak away without Bass noticing. Isaac used his free arm to rub Bass’s shoulder. So much had changed over the last few weeks, and so much could never go back to the way it was. He still couldn’t process it all. As Bass snuggled in closer, his breath already easing into the first layers of sleep, Isaac let the closeness burrow into him, too. He kissed the top of Bass’s head—
somehow it always smelled like the air right after it rained, earthy and damp but never unpleasant—grateful that at least this had not changed.
• • • • •
Dew soaked Isaac’s and Bass’s feet in moments, and they weren’t even past the first line of trees from the trailer’s doorstep. The sun hadn’t risen high enough to dry it yet, though the day promised to be warm and breezy. Isaac would need to get them some sturdier footwear or their feet would be perpetually wet. Bass had already discovered how slick the dew made the long grass, running and sliding across it. Seeing the natural escalation too slowly, Isaac could only groan. There wasn’t time to stop it. Bass had already started his next dash, this time diving face-first like he would on a Slip’N Slide, gliding a few feet before stopping. When he popped up, his shirt and pants were drenched and a sloppy grin beamed off his face.
“Hey, Wahoo, how about we try and make a decent good impression?” He helped Bass brush off the dead leaves that clung to his now soggy shirt. With the way the sun was coming up, he’d dry off in no time. It wasn’t worth heading back for a change of clothes—especially when he’d just find another way to get messy.
“What do you think I’m going to be doing?” Bass asked.
“Not sure. Whatever Miss Lund asks you to do.”
“But what do you think? Maybe I’ll get to drive a tractor.”
Isaac laughed.
“We aren’t on that kind of farm—and you’re too young to be driving anything other than a broom around the floor.”
They walked for a few moments in silence as the white farmhouse became visible between the trees.
“That house is huge. Are they rich?” Bass asked.
“Don’t ask Miss Lund that.” Isaac bit his cheek to keep from smiling at Bass’s innocent yet impertinent question. “If I were to guess, I bet they used to have a lot more people living there than just them. If you look at the bottom, that’s the foundation and it’s made from fieldstone, not concrete blocks, so you can tell it’s been around for a while. People don’t really use fieldstone in construction anymore.”
He had noticed it yesterday, too. The house was hard to miss, rising out of the trees like a mountain—or a nice-sized hill. He had been surprised to learn that only Sanna and Einars lived there, running the entire orchard themselves. Envisioning them working long days, then bumping around an empty house painted the entire orchard with a melancholy patina.
It seemed a lonely life.
He touched the dangling branches, the spring bright leaves hiding baby green apples, a first glimpse at the harvest to come. Everything around him was new and fresh with so much growing left to do. Yet with all the new growth, the trees had aged bark, wrinkled and scarred where branches had been trimmed off. He could almost feel the roots winding deeper into the earth, stretching themselves ever farther while their crowns reached to the sun.
Sometimes Bass grew the same way. He’d put him to bed with pants that fit perfectly, then wake in the morning to see two inches more of ankle. Some nights they’d put bags of ice on his shins to freeze out the growing pains.
Isaac took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the clean air, not the stagnant, stinky feet fug of their car. With each breath, the tension of the last few weeks eased out, like the shaking out of a rug. Each breath released more of the dirt. He’d never get all of it out, but he felt cleaner than he had since he decided to take Bass on this journey. He shoved the sadness that lingered down deep. No amount of shaking could remove it, so he’d need to keep it hidden.
His priorities now were to make sure Bass enjoyed this adventure as much as possible. The fresh air, the blue skies, the warm water at the beach in the nearby state park. He wanted his son to learn how to climb a tree and catch fireflies, maybe how to grill a hamburger on the Weber he had seen behind the trailer. This time needed to be so wonderful that Bass would forgive Isaac for not telling him the truth about Paige right away.
Bass started tilting his head in a rhythm, and Isaac knew what was coming.
“Farts and butts and farts and butts and farts and butts,” Bass chanted in time to the head tilts.
Isaac couldn’t help but smile before he nipped this latest verbal tick.
“Perhaps you should keep the backside commentary to a minimum until the Lunds get used to us. As shocking as you may find it, not everyone thinks farts are as funny as you do. Got it?”
“Got it.”
With a skip, Bass took off at a run to weave between the apple trees, juking back and forth. Isaac wasn’t sure if he was envisioning an epic lightsaber battle or an end-of-game touchdown run, but he knew it had nothing to do with their actual surroundings. But it was the surroundings that Isaac was counting on to give the two of them some much-needed sanctuary.
Watching Bass’s unbridled play, Isaac knew he had done the right thing. He didn’t need to know the truth yet. One more summer of innocence.
• • • • •
As they approached the tree line, Issac saw Einars and Sanna waiting for them at the same time Bass did. He stopped running and returned to his dad’s side, walking half a step behind him, still not ready to leave the safety of his dad’s shadow. Isaac wasn’t used to this reticent side of Bass—but what else could he expect when he took him from everything that was familiar?
Einars and Sanna stood on gravel, twin stalks of denim and plaid. Einars’s wispy gray hair shook in the morning breeze while Sanna’s didn’t move. It was pale with a hint of red, like the first blush on a ripening apple. You had to see it in the sunlight to make sure it was really there.
They hadn’t spotted them yet, so Isaac took a moment to watch her as she plucked weeds from the gravel drive. When she stood, she was almost as tall as her father and she owned every inch. Her spine was straight and challenging, her movements concise and efficient as she bent at her waist and tore the plants up in quick yanks. She moved as much as she needed to, exactly as she needed to. There was a certain unself-conscious grace in it. Her mouth was a straight line on her pale, smooth skin. For someone who must spend a lot of time out of doors, this seemed a mystery until she put on a floppy, wide-brimmed hat with open weaving and a long strap to keep it from falling off.
He wanted to stand there all day drinking her in, enchanted. Before taking his first step onto the gravel parking lot, Isaac paused, his feet still buried in the damp grass of the orchard. He could feel a pull from behind his navel drawing him straight toward her. He hadn’t noticed it in yesterday’s introductions, he’d been too focused on Bass and getting him settled into a new place. But today there was no question.
Good Lord, he had a full-blown, five-alarm crush on the boss’s daughter.
He stepped back, bumping into Bass.
“Dad!” he yelped.
Both Einars and Sanna turned to them. Isaac’s chest thumped as her eyes hit his, then turned to Bass without even a pause, no recognition that she felt a pull in his direction. He straightened his shoulders and gave in to the magical tow line drawing him forward. Not like he had a choice—he couldn’t exactly go back to the trailer. As soon as he gave in, a smile spread across his face and his steps lightened.
“Morning,” Einars said as Bass and Isaac joined them. “Sleep well?”
“Very. It’s been a long time since I fell asleep to the sound of leaves rustling outside my window.” He watched Sanna out of the side of his eye. She stood still, watching her dad speak but clearly mentally somewhere else.
“Good, good.” He nodded, his blue eyes flicking from Isaac to Sanna. “You’ll start the day with me and the young man can help Sanna clean up the mess from yesterday. Isn’t that right, Sanna?”
Sanna jolted at the sound of her name and looked from her father to Bass to Isaac. Isaac gave a little smile to her, but she looked back at Bass, who was standing so close to Isaac he was stepping on his foot. Isaac gave his shoulder a little squeeze to reassure him, and himself. Why couldn’t Sanna be a bit more friendly toward Bass? He was a good
kid and obviously uncomfortable with the prospect of being alone with her. Was she completely oblivious to it?
“Yes,” she said. “Follow me.” She turned and walked toward the barn. Bass looked up at Isaac, and he winked.
“Just listen to her instructions and be friendly. I’ll see you in a bit.” Bass nodded, swallowed, then ran to catch up before she disappeared into the barn. Isaac felt a pang as the two walked into the shadows. She was like a thistle, regal from a distance, but get too close and it would prick you. She had better not hurt Bass—crush or not.
“Good luck,” Einars said. Isaac turned to look at him.
“Pardon?” he asked.
“Good luck. I mean it. I looked at my wife the same way you’re looking at my daughter now, and my Sanna won’t make it easy.”
He was looking at her in a certain way? Had she noticed?
“You think . . . Ha! No. Bass is a little nervous so I was making sure he was okay.” And that was partly true.
Einars sucked on his teeth as he took in Isaac’s lie, deciding if he’d let him get away with it.
“Sure.” He grinned. “Let me show you around the place.”
Isaac gave the barn one last glance before following after the older man toward the head of the parking lot. Einars stopped and turned to face the orchard.
“Here’s a quick lay of the land. Nearest the road on the south side.” He pointed to his right. “These are the Earlies—the apples designed to ripen first. As you get farther back, the apples ripen later and later in the season. The same is true for the north side on the rear of the house.” He moved his hand to indicate between the house and the barn. “In the far northeast corner are our oldest trees—the Looms. Those are Sanna’s trees, so defer to her on those. We have about nine thousand trees total, from just grafted a few days ago to very old. This land has been in our family since 1870, and we’ve been growing apples ever since.”
The Simplicity of Cider Page 4