was always the busiest time of year.
Perspiration dotted the space between his shoulder blades. He’d forgotten how much manual labor running the orchard could be. How had Mr. Crest managed the past few years? Toby leaned over the sink and cracked the window, letting in a stream of wind. He dragged in a deep breath of air through his nostrils. Sweet notes from the nearby Fuji, Red Delicious and Gravenstein trees flooded his senses. Those smells were home and happiness. Everything he longed for but could never have—not someone like him, not permanently.
Jenna and her mom, along with a team of hired seasonal workers, used to spend all of fall in the kitchen area baking pies, making apple-cider donuts and apple dumplings, loaves and muffins, canning applesauce, and cooking apple butter and jelly. Did Jenna do that all alone now? Did the Crests still run the store at all?
He should have been here. Should have helped them.
A heavy weight settled in his gut.
The Crests weren’t his family, not by blood. Even still, he’d spent so many years moping over dreams lost when he could have been of use here. But he could change that now. Toby would be here for them, and he would work hard.
Maybe his life would actually matter. He could finally prove he wasn’t a failure.
Okay, that might be asking too much.
Toby dropped more apples into the sink before turning on the faucet. They needed to be scrubbed and chopped; then he could put them in the apple press. Nothing went to waste at the orchard. They always used all the fallen apples to make cider. This would become a daily process once they opened for the season.
The side door creaked, drawing his gaze.
Jenna entered and glanced around. “My dad sent me in here to check on you.” She closed the door and moved a few feet closer. “Making cider?”
“I figured it was time for the first batch of the season.” He turned off the faucet and pulled the scrub brush off the counter. “You guys still run the store out of the front?”
“We’ll open next weekend. The pumpkins should be delivered on Wednesday.” She placed a dishtowel over her shoulder, selected a knife from the drawer, gathered a cutting board and joined him by the sink. “You wash, I’ll cut.”
For a few minutes the only sounds were water sloshing, the rhythmic chops of the knife going through the fleshy apples and a nest of birds outside. When he moved to refill the sink with more apples, Toby snuck another glance at Jenna. Even with her hair tucked back in a ponytail, golden waves framed her face. His eyes ran over her gentle curves. Jenna was beautiful. How had he missed that when he was young?
Even if he had noticed, he’d never have been worthy of her. She was innocent. Pure. He was...he was every mistake in the book, and then some. Someone like him could never deserve someone like Jenna Crest. Not in a million years. Not when he was in high school, and certainly not now.
She stopped cutting and looked over at him. “Need something?” She ran the back of her wrist over her forehead.
He’d been caught staring. Great. Toby cleared his throat as he picked up a few more apples. “How’d your dad’s appointment go?”
Her knife stilled over the board. “They said...” She took a breath and started again. “They said he should stop walking.” She cut into the apple but then straightened up and rolled her shoulders. “They’re making him get a motorized wheelchair.”
When Jenna’s mom had been unable to walk was when her health had really started to go downhill. Hearing the same news about her father had to have hit Jenna hard. “How bad is he?”
Her forehead wrinkled. She smoothed her fingers over it. “I might as well tell you. I don’t really tell anyone this stuff, or what I told you yesterday about my panic attacks, but I guess I will. It’s not like you wouldn’t figure stuff out, living on our property. Do you know what he has?”
He knew that look. The one that said “Please don’t make me explain something I don’t want to acknowledge exists.” He knew because he’d worn that expression many times himself. He’d spent his childhood pretending to be okay. Pretending his brother’s illness and death didn’t affect him. Pretending he was the perfect son, athlete, student—anything people wanted him to be—so that he didn’t have to answer questions or be honest about what he really felt. Didn’t have to tell them he hated it all, the death and the questions and trying to be the son who “deserved” to live. It was all an act. Ben had been a better person than him. Would have been a better man. He would have made his life matter. Toby was sure of that.
Toby knew that in the same way he knew that his own life was a waste.
But thoughts like that wouldn’t help Jenna. He needed to find a way to get her to talk more. Engage with him. Stop disliking him.
Toby ran his finger over a splintering crack in the counter. “Primary progressive MS. My mom told me.”
“Your mom. Of course.” She turned toward him, pressing her hip into the counter. “So how much do you know about us?”
He shrugged. His mom was a bit of a talker. Some would call her a gossip.
He wasn’t about to admit that he knew it’d taken her six years through correspondence courses to finally achieve her college degree. “You went to college for journalism. Did some freelance writing for a magazine and newspaper out of—” he held up a finger, thinking back over his conversations with his parents “—Grand Rapids. You lived there for a little bit, right?”
Her face clouded and she looked away. “Up until six months ago.”
Toby’s gut kicked a little. Had she left behind a life she loved back in Grand Rapids? A boyfriend? His chest felt tight. Why did that thought bother him so much?
“Do you miss it?”
She laughed softly. “I was writing a little, but mostly working at the coffee shop below my apartment. Not exactly earthshaking stuff. I was glad to come back. Relieved, actually. Does that make me a bad person?”
He was in a similar place—here because his cousin had passed. Something bad had brought him back, but he’d welcomed any sort of direction in his life. “I hope not, because I was happy to come back here, too.”
“I mean, I had to come back because my father was sick. And I was happy to have a reason to come back—not happy he’s sick, but...does that make sense?” Guilt made her face tense.
A part of him really wanted to open up his arms and offer her a hug, but she wouldn’t accept that. At least, he was pretty sure she wouldn’t and wasn’t brave enough to try without knowing he wouldn’t get shot down.
“Completely. You can say anything around me—you know that. We always functioned with the umbrella. What’d we call it?” He squinted, looking at her for the answer.
She sighed, and the tiniest trace of a smile pulled at her lips. “The Umbrella of Grace. Whenever we wanted to say something blunt or hard, we’d pretend to open an umbrella and both stand under it and call it the Umbrella of Grace. We could say whatever we wanted without judgment.”
“As long as the umbrella was up.” Warmth spread across his chest. How had he forgotten about that? More important, what else had he forgotten when it came to their friendship? He’d blocked most of it out when he left for college, too aware that if he held on to those memories, relived them, it would make him miss things he couldn’t have.
But was it possible for him and Jenna to pretend? To act like they did in the old days? As if life could exist simply on the orchard, and they could forget failures and pressure from the outside world? If Toby was excellent at anything, it was pretending.
Toby wiped his hands off on his shirt, then pretended to click an umbrella open and duck under it. “Want to come under here with me?”
She braced her free hand on the counter. “Those days are over. You and