“Pretty fresh for imported pie,” she mumbled around a second eager bite. Fresh was an understatement. These cherries had a soul.
“It isn’t imported. There’s an orchard behind Agnes’s store. The pie is homemade.”
Evie quirked a brow. Seemed improbable for cherries to grow this far north, but the moment he said it, her imagination painted a picture: trees sloped on a hillside, exploding with sanguine bubbles of fleshy fruit, waxy green leaves shimmying with the wind. According to her mother, she was short on a lot of things, but at least she had her imagination going for her.
“In a greenhouse or something?” She gobbled another bite.
“Nuh-uh.” He shook his head, digging into his own slice. “Outside. Just over the hill beyond the sheep pasture. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself. Increíble. You should go see it.”
Evie cast a dubious glance out the window at the hill, mossy edges glowing gold beneath a gray sky. It somehow managed to be sunny and cloudy at the same time. Condensation haloed around the panes, evidence of the summer’s frosty breath.
The two of them finished their dessert in quiet. Soft chewing, satisfied grunts, and the space heater’s tiresome buzz saturated their small cottage. Evie scraped the last bite from her plate, sad to see it go.
“Where’s your necklace?” An unspoken accusation seeped around his words. Evie touched her bare neck, fully aware she wasn’t wearing the gold chain and crucifix he’d given her for Christmas. Under the sleeve on her wrist, she wore the silver Saint Christopher charm bracelet Abuela had given her instead. Patron saint of travelers, Abuela had reminded her before she left. She hadn’t taken it off since. The necklace clashed with it.
“Didn’t put it back on after showering.”
He nodded, lines in his face suddenly deeper. Disappointment always carved itself in his forehead, so everyone was sure not to miss it.
“One more thing.” He pulled a black silk eye mask from his jacket pocket and set it on the table. “Try to get some sleep tonight. This might help. The Internet will still be there mañana.”
The Internet barely worked when nobody was awake to use it, much less during the day when everyone in the string of mossy-roofed guesthouses on the property tried to tap into the Wi-Fi. At least if she stayed up to chat with her friends, she sometimes got a solid ten minutes of communication before the bandwidth petered out again. Five hours ahead of Miami, she had to make it to midnight, minimum, if she wanted to catch Loretta and Ben after their shifts at Wild Waves.
“Okay.” Her chair clunked across the knots in the floor as she slid backward and stood, gathering empty pie plates.
Her papá raised his hand to stop her.
“I’ll get those. Get to bed, mija. Maybe we can do some exploring this weekend. It’s supposed to warm up to the sixties tomorrow.”
“The sixties?” A sarcastic laugh elbowed its way out of her chest as she fastened the sleep mask around the top of her head. “Caliente,” she deadpanned, and then loaded up with the new art supplies she had no intentions of using. On principle, of course.
“I have to go into the city for a bit in the morning, but I’ll be back before you wake up,” he said, ignoring her tone. Sure he would. And she would grow a third ear by morning. An extra, so she’d have a place to store all his empty promises.
Meandering through their unpacked life, Evie pushed open the creaky door to her summer cell. “Goodnight, Papá.” She gently kicked the door closed behind her, not waiting for his reply. After dumping the canvases and paint on a tattered wing chair covered by her winter clothes, she sank onto the thin mattress of the single bed. The patchwork quilt Abuela made for her glowed toasty-warm through her pajamas from a spray of sunshine. After yanking the shade closed, she wiggled a finger over her open laptop’s track pad and held her breath as her messenger app came to life.
Ben Benson – active two minutes ago.
The cursor blinked back at her. She wished she could freeze-frame the way he’d looked standing in the parking lot outside Wild Waves that night the week before she left. Tousled hair hung over his eyes and his body stretched downward into his lifeguard trunks. Those trunks weren’t the only reason red was her favorite color, but they definitely boosted its case.
He’d tilted his head and leaned forward, and anticipation had lit her on fire. But then he’d spoken, and the magic of the moment evaporated like sea mist. When she tasted his sour tongue, his hand tasted the inside of her swimsuit top. Before he could get it untied, she pushed him away.
Whether or not that was a mistake still remained to be seen. Loretta seemed to think she was being a baby. Make him beg for it, she’d said. But don’t shut him down or he’ll find it somewhere else. You’ll be gone all summer. It’s not that Evie wasn’t risk-the-fiery-pits-of-hell curious. She was—she wanted to feel, to experience something real. But only under the right circumstances. She liked Ben, but when he groped her like that and let clumsy, stupid words fall out of his mouth, she felt nothing. All that penned-up emotion vanished, leaving her wondering if it’d ever been there to begin with.
He’s a Zip-It, Loretta had joked. Stand there and look hot, but please shut the eff up. A lot of guys her age were Zip-Its. Until that moment in the parking lot, though, Evie thought the dipshit persona might’ve been an act. Nobody ever saw her for her real self, either. She still had hope. With trembling fingers, she typed Hi.
She stared a hole through his status—waiting. Her eyelids grew heavy, despite the sun’s invasion through the linen shade. She stretched out next to the screen, pulling her sleep mask down. I’ll just rest my eyes for a minute.
CHAPTER TWO
Oskar’s Journal
There is nothing more infuriating
than someone telling me
what I should or should not do
with something that belongs to me.
Cut your hair.
Stop wasting your talent.
Don’t harvest the cherries from the Aisling tree.
My hair will stay unkempt.
I’ll play when I feel like it.
And do what I want.
My hair. My music. My tree.
Fat, icy raindrops
pelt the top of my head
as I move through the orchard
toward the warm shelter of the store.
They slide over my scalp, running through the maze of hair
until they gather at the base of my neck.
I pause under the overhang
outside the door
and shake myself off like a mongrel.
I’ll finish this tomorrow
or when the sky stops weeping.
Whichever comes first.
There are days when I wish my family
had never planted this orchard.
Sometimes I think we’d be better off,
Agnes and me,
if we didn’t have to tend
the abandoned dreams of loved ones lost.
But my aunt is a typical pushy Scot
about the property my parents left in her care.
I figure I take more after
the Icelandic side
of my family.
But Agnes is all the family I have now.
Get ye to gatherin’, Oskar!
Agnes’s Scottish brogue