“It’s just been a while since I’ve hung out with any of my friends or played baseball. I kind of miss them.”
Isaac stopped in his tracks. Now that he and Sanna were finally connecting, he really didn’t want to leave, but the whole point of coming here had been to do what he thought was right for Bass. Keeping him away from California was feeling like a decision he was less and less certain of.
Bass raced ahead again to slide, but he hit a spot where the dew had dried and flopped onto his face. Isaac started to jog to him when Bass rolled over, clutching his stomach with laughter.
“See, rubber,” Sanna said. She glanced at him, then put her hat on her head, hiding her eyes in the shadows.
They’d arrived at the tree, where the mason jars still hung from the branches and the grass was still bunched down from where they danced. Sanna carefully unwrapped the tape to see how the tree was doing, then kept unraveling until it hung like noodles from her fingers. She ran her hand over the smooth bark.
“It’s completely better.” She said the words slowly. “But that doesn’t make any sense . . .”
“Are you sure that’s one of the trees that was girdled?”
Sanna turned to him, with a look he could easily interpret. She knew every tree in this orchard like her own face.
“How is that possible? I assumed it would take weeks to heal,” he said.
Sanna’s face scrunched in thought. “It should, but under just the right circumstances . . . maybe we got lucky. I need to check the others.”
Isaac followed her, uselessly, as she inspected all the damaged trees. Those closest to the dancing tree were partially healed, those farthest looked the same as yesterday. Sanna didn’t speak, but with each tree she pursed her lips tighter.
“Maybe we should kiss under all of them?” Isaac said, making sure Bass was out of earshot before he said it.
Sanna snapped her head to look at him.
“Don’t say anything to my dad.”
“You want me to lie about kissing you or the trees?”
“Yes. Both. Point blank. He has funny ideas about things—sometimes he thinks the trees respond to the people around them, this will only encourage him.”
“I’m sure there’s a valid explanation.”
“If he thinks you being here helped heal the trees, he’ll do everything he can to convince you to stay. And you don’t want to be here in winter. Door County is bustling this time of year, but six months from now it’s snow and wind and quiet. Sometimes it snows so badly, we can’t leave our house for a few days. Sometimes the power goes out. Sometimes it’s days before we see other people. It’s lonely and isolating and not everyone likes it.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No. But I’ve seen what this place can do to those who aren’t suited for it. It’s devastating. My mom . . .” Sanna took a deep breath, and Isaac knew her next words would be ones she didn’t share often. “My mom left my dad when I was six. She hated it here so much, she left us and never came back, never even called or wrote.” She looked in his eyes with her pained blue ones. “If even a tiny part of you is thinking about staying—and I’m not saying you are—you need to know the facts.”
He hadn’t been thinking of staying—nor could he, because of Bass. But now he wished he could. Isaac didn’t think the idea of being trapped in a house with Sanna sounded bad at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY
It had been two weeks since their dance under the tree and Sanna hadn’t found a chance to sneak more time with Isaac. She didn’t know where things stood between them. It was clear they were attracted to each other, but he was going to leave sooner rather than later. Everything she’d done since college was to protect her heart from this exact circumstance—but her heart happily ignored all the sensible advice her head shouted. Would a few weeks of bliss be worth the future heartache?
With her dad’s physical therapy still going strong, too many thoughts about Isaac cracking her focus, and harvest starting, Sanna was up until two in the morning and awake again by six every day. She paid bills, prepped their meals, made calls to the bank, labeled the cider, and tried not to strangle her dad when he groused about doing his exercises. Today was the first day of harvest, and tomorrow they opened the farm stand, which would hopefully be the first day of cider sales to make a dent in the loan payments—but she tried not to think about it to avoid feeling nauseous.
“Bass, you almost full?”
Sanna looked down the ladder to see Bass, the harvest-picking bag strapped around his shoulders like a reverse backpack. The bags were actually long canvas tubes with the end folded up and secured to keep the apples from falling out the bottom. Once the bag was full, they unhooked the bottom end and the apples would roll out into a bin on the back of Elliot. Bass was in charge of the lower branches, while Sanna took the rest of the tree. When he walked, he waddled, not being big enough to move the bag to the side when walking.
“Yep.”
“It looks like we’ve got most of the Galas. Let’s finish up this section, then have our lunch.”
They finished picking the ripe red apples off the arching branches, then gently released their cargo from the bottoms of the bags, careful not to bruise the fruit. Sanna pulled out the cooler where they kept their lunches. Isaac would be joining them shortly. He was helping set up the stand with Einars, then he’d spend the afternoon picking with them. Tonight, they’d sort and bag apples into pecks and bushels for customers.
As Sanna and Bass munched their peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches, the sun warmed the top of her head and the lack of breeze added to the warmth. She watched the little boy chew his sandwich, curious what he was thinking about in this rare, still moment.
“Did you and your dad start school yet?” Sanna asked.
“Yeah. I’m working on multiplying fractions. I can never remember which is the denominator and which is the numerator.”
“I have the same problem. The good news is you don’t need to remember the names when you grow up. You just need to do it.”
“But why not just use calculators?”
“Sometimes you don’t have them, and it’s faster in your head. Like what’s one-half times two?”
Bass rolled his eyes at her. “That’s easy, that’s one,” he said.
Sanna handed him one of the apples. “Don’t we need to wash these?”
“It rained last week.” Sanna shrugged and bit into her apple. “I’ve been eating apples straight off the tree all my life, and look how tall I am. You’ll be fine.”
Bass took a huge bite, juice spraying to his cheeks.
“So who’s your favorite superhero?” Bass asked.
“On to the important stuff, I see.” Sanna gave the question some serious thought. A favorite superhero said a lot about a person.
“Mine is Iron Man. He’s rich, smart, and gets the ladies,” he volunteered. Obviously it had been on his mind for a while.
Sanna snorted.