Twelve days after my husband died, I caught my neighbor climbing over my fence with bags full of his apples. I thought she wanted the fruit—until she mentioned a secret from 27 years ago.**
My husband, Daniel, treated our apple trees like members of the family.
Every September, he walked through the garden with a pair of pruning shears in his back pocket, inspecting branches and turning apples in his palm as if they might tell him when they were ready.
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 hold on to afternoons like that.
Daniel had been tired more often lately, and although neither of us said much about it in front of the children, I had started watching him too closely.
How long he rested after climbing 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 floated 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’d 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.
