My eyes blinked out a stunned rhythm as I tried to comprehend her words. No matter how hard I tried, they didn’t make sense. I mean, I guessed it was possible; the timing of his disappearance and Richard’s attack was more than a coincidence.
But why would he do it?
It wasn’t love. It couldn’t be. We’d barely spent any time with him. You couldn’t love someone you’d only just met. It took time to get to know someone. Their likes and dislikes. What kind of person they were.
“I’m going to get my stuff. Then we can go to the orchard.”
Frankie dashed down the hall to her room, leaving me stunned with her revelation. My body hadn’t moved, but my mind spun in circles, going a million miles a minute.
Haizley’s words came back to me from our first meeting, when she realized where Derek went but wouldn’t tell me. As soon as I told her what happened at the diner, she called Jack.
Derek’s brother.
Frankie appeared in the mouth of the hallway, bringing me out of my head. I plastered a smile on my face so she wouldn’t see the concerned thoughts in my head.
“Ready?” I asked.
Chapter Nineteen
Katrina
The ride out to the orchard was quiet. Over and over, I thought about Frankie’s revelation that it was Derek who had saved Hannah and attacked Richard. That hearing what he had done to Frankie sent him halfway across the country to beat the hell out of a man he had never met.
Who did that?
Someone dangerous.
“There it is!” Frankie squealed, bouncing in her seat.
Her excitement had me smiling. This was her first sleepover. I turned off Highway 80 onto a dirt road by the sign that read “Winslow Orchards” in faded green paint with a large hand-painted red apple behind the words.
The driveway stretched out in front of us for at least a quarter of a mile, maybe more. The store came into view, and I could see the orchard spreading out on both sides. Rows and rows of smaller trees, all perfectly lined up like soldiers, their branches mostly bare now, reaching up like dark fingers against the pale sky. Without their leaves, I could see the structure of them, the way they’d been pruned and shaped over the years.
The driveway curved gently to the left, and as we followed it, I could see more of the orchard. It was huge—way bigger than I’d imagined. The trees seemed to go on forever, disappearing into the distance where the land rolled into gentle hills. Nebraska was flatter than most places I’d seen, but the Winslow propertyhad these subtle rises and falls that made the orchard look like it was breathing, like waves on a gray-brown ocean.
“Look at all those trees!” Frankie exclaimed
“Maggie must work really hard,” I said quietly as I thought about how young she was. How she was taking care of her siblings as well as running a business of this magnitude.
The driveway curved again, and suddenly we could see the house. It was a big old farmhouse, two stories tall, painted white with green shutters that matched the sign out by the highway. It had a wraparound porch with a swing on one end, and the house looked old but well-kept, like someone spent a lot of time making sure it didn’t fall apart.
Behind the house was a big red barn and several smaller outbuildings. Maggie’s pickup truck was parked near the barn, beside some kind of tractor or machinery I didn’t recognize. Everything looked organized and purposeful, like every single thing had its place and its job.
I’d never felt more inadequate than I did right now, seeing everything Maggie was responsible for and how she was holding it all together. She was more than a decade younger than me, and all I had to show for my life was two failed relationships with men whose only goal had been to destroy me and my daughter.
“There’s Cami!” Frankie shrieked again, spotting her friend on the porch.
Cami, who was bundled up in a thick jacket, waved both arms over her head as if she were trying to flag down an airplane. Frankie waved back so hard she almost hit me in the face. She was out the door before I’d barely stopped the car.
“Frankie, wait—” I called, but it was pointless. Her focus was her new friend, and I smiled as they crashed into each other in a hug.
The girls were babbling quietly to each other when I finally caught up to them, carrying our overnight bags. Maggie cameout of the house then, her long red hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt over a T-shirt that said “Winslow Orchards” with that same faded apple logo.
“Come on in,” Maggie said. “I just made some hot cider, and I thought we could all sit for a bit before the girls run off to cause chaos.”
“I heard that!” Cami said, but she was grinning.
We followed Maggie inside to the kitchen, and the first thing I noticed was the warmth and aroma of cinnamon and apples. Not just the temperature, but the kind of warmth from years of use. Decades of mothers and grandmothers, generations working together to make the home feel comforting.
