Twelve days after my husband died, I found my neighbor halfway over the fence with bags stuffed with his apples. I assumed she only wanted the fruit—until she brought up a secret from twenty-seven years ago.
My husband, Daniel, treated our apple trees like family.
Every September he moved through the garden with pruning shears in his back pocket, checking branches and turning apples in his hand as if they might tell him when they were ready.
“When it’s ready, you won’t have to fight for it.”
That afternoon our eight-year-old son, Ben, followed him from tree to tree with a basket.
“Not that one,” Daniel said when Ben reached for a bright red apple.
Ben frowned. “It looks ready.”
“Looks can lie. Give it a little twist.”
Ben tried again. The apple stayed firmly on the branch.
“See?” Daniel smiled. “When it’s ready, you won’t have to fight for it.”
I wanted to keep afternoons like that.
Daniel had been tired more often, and though neither of us said much in front of the children, I had started watching him too closely. How long he rested after the ladder. Whether he finished dinner. How often he rubbed his chest when he thought I wasn’t looking.
He caught me staring. “Claire, stop worrying.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You’ve been married to me for twenty-seven years. You’re terrible at lying.”
Before I could answer, a voice came over the fence.
“That’s quite a harvest this year.”
Our neighbor Monica stood on the other side, looking through the branches. At fifty she was always perfectly put together, even when she was supposedly gardening.
She had known Daniel years before I met him.
Apparently they had grown up around the same circles and gone out a few times when they were young.
Daniel had mentioned it casually when Monica inherited her parents’ old house and moved back next door nearly nine years earlier.
I’d never cared.
Ancient history was ancient history.
Minutes later a van pulled up in Monica’s driveway, and a young man climbed out carrying a toolbox. He’d been around her house several times that summer.
“Your plumber’s back,” I said.
Monica glanced toward him. “Old houses. There’s always something.”
The man looked over and lifted a hand.
Daniel returned the gesture, then kept staring for another second.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.” Daniel rubbed his jaw. “He just reminds me of someone.”
“Who?”
Daniel looked again, but the man had disappeared inside Monica’s house.
“I don’t know. Can’t place it.”
Then Ben called him back to the trees, and the moment passed.
Daniel rested one hand on our son’s shoulder and looked up through the branches. “These trees will keep feeding you, even when I’m gone.”
My stomach tightened. “Daniel.”
“What?” He gave me that familiar smile. “Trees live a long time.”
“Then talk about them living a long time. Not you disappearing.”
He squeezed my hand when I joined them.
Twelve days later, my husband died.
