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“Where do you want the coffee?”

Kate turned with a half-full picking bag against her hip and found Gabe standing beside a folding table with two large insulated containers at his feet. Mara was behind him carrying a box of cups, while Joel was trying to guide another truck far enough off the track to leave room for the tractor.

“Ask Mom,” Kate said. “It’s her orchard.”

Gabe grinned. “Excellent answer.”

Janice heard him and came over, gloves already dirty from the first half hour in the trees. “Put it beside the packing shed. People can get to it without walking through the tractor route. And thank you. All of you.”

“You can thank us when you see how much food there is,” Gabe said. “I brought pastries. The Community Kitchen is sending lunch over later.”

Mara lowered her box onto the table. “He brought enough pastries to feed everyone until Christmas. I made him leave half of them behind.”

“I like people to have options.”

“You like people to have second breakfast.”

“That too.”

Kate smiled and went back to the row before she became part of the discussion. People had been arriving since shortly after seven. Some came for the whole day, others only for a few hours before work or after dropping children at school. A couple of trucks had trailers. Others brought nothing except boots, gloves and a willingness to do whatever Alan or Wes showed them. Yesterday Bramblewood had sounded like an orchard at harvest. Today it sounded as if half of Bear Creek had moved in.

Voices carried between the trees. Engines started and stopped. Someone laughed from the next row, and farther uphill an aluminum ladder rattled as it was carried to the next tree. Her father had looked slightly stunned by the first few arrivals. By the time the fifth car came along the track, he had stopped trying to thank everyone individually and started putting them to work.

Janice had adapted even faster. She had names on the back of an envelope before the third truck was parked, and she was sending people to rows as they arrived.

She and Alan moved through the orchard together, checking what was being picked and where the full containers needed to go. Neither of them looked like experts, but they looked increasingly like people who understood that nobody expected them to become experts overnight.

For the first hour, Kate had picked with the block map folded in her jacket pocket, checking the running note on her phone whenever she needed to keep track of which trailers were moving between the two orchards and where Wes had sent people to work. Once the early rush settled, she put the phone away and joined in wherever another pair of hands was useful.

She carried. She picked. She fetched empty containers and moved full ones when they were light enough. When she did something wrong, someone corrected her and she tried again. There was something wonderfully uncomplicated about it.

“Mom!”

Kate looked up. Penny stood beside Eileen with an apple in one hand and her bucket in the other.

“I found one with a leaf still on it.”

“That’s a good one.”

“I’m keeping the leaf.”

“Then put it somewhere it won’t blow away.”

Penny dropped the apple into her bucket and carefully removed the leaf. Eileen watched her with a smile before returning to the tree beside her. She had been working since early morning, slower than most of the people around her but with the assurance of someone who knew exactly how much pressure to use when she twisted an apple free. Had today been difficult for Eileen? If it had, she had given no sign. She had simply arrived in the same old jacket, put on her gloves and asked Alan which block they were starting in.

Kate shifted her picking bag and moved farther along the row. By midmorning, the first section was nearly clear. The sight of the full bins seemed to give everyone fresh energy. Alan certainly had more than he had started with. He stood near the tractor talking to Wes, pointing toward the next block while Janice listened beside him. Then Wes looked across the row and found Kate.

The pull in her chest was immediate. She still had not quite become used to that. He said something to Alan and came toward her.

Wes looked at the bag hanging against her hip. “How are your hands?”

Kate flexed her fingers inside her gloves. “They ache. My shoulders ache. There is dirt in places I didn’t realize dirt could reach. And I’m having a very good day.”

His smile softened. “Good.”

Kate looked past him toward the boundary. “How’s Russet Hill?”

“Better than yesterday. They got most of the exposed cider fruit in after I left here. I’ve still got people working over there, but I can stay for a while.”