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She knew now what staying cost him. She had seen enough yesterday to understand how much of Wes’s attention normally lived in the land around his house.

Kate slipped her hand into his. For several seconds they stood there while people worked around them. It should have felt strange, holding hands in the middle of Bramblewood’s main harvest while half the town moved through the trees. Instead, it felt oddly normal. Did anyone even notice? If they did, nobody made anything of it. Kate left her hand where it was.

Wes rubbed his thumb over the back of her glove. “Have you eaten?”

“I’ll eat when this bag’s empty.”

Someone called Wes from uphill. He squeezed her hand before releasing it. Kate watched him go, then caught herself smiling again and returned to the apples.

By eleven, the Community Kitchen had arrived. There were sandwiches, soup in insulated containers, trays of baked goods and more coffee than Kate thought even this many people could drink. Nobody stopped the harvest all at once. People wandered over when they had a few minutes, ate standing up or perched on crates, then went back to work. Kate had just carried a stack of empty cups away from the edge of the table when she nearly collided with Mara, who was shifting one end of a folding table.

“Sorry,” Mara said. “I’m trying very hard not to reorganize this.”

Kate looked at the table. Then at the narrow gap between it and the shed door, where people had been squeezing past each other all morning. “I was about to move it.”

Mara laughed. “I knew I liked you.”

Together they shifted it two feet to the left. Immediately the path to the door opened. Kate stepped back and looked at it. “That’s been annoying me for an hour.”

“Me too. But I told myself this wasn’t my event, so I was going to keep my hands to myself.”

“It isn’t my orchard, and that didn’t stop me.”

Mara smiled. “Do you do this everywhere?”

“Mostly with rooms. I walk into somebody’s house and start thinking about why they have to turn sideways to get around a chair.”

“I look at a room and wonder why somebody put the registration table where it’ll create a line across the fire exit.”

Kate laughed. There it was. Not the same instinct exactly, but close enough that she recognized it. “I think we might be dangerous together.”

“Probably.” Mara handed her a sandwich from the table. “Eat this before Wes comes over and tells both of us we’ve forgotten lunch.”

Kate accepted it.

“You’ve noticed that too?”

“Gabe is the same. If he thinks somebody hasn’t eaten, they don’t stand much chance.”

Kate unwrapped the sandwich. It was the first time she and Mara had spoken for more than a few minutes without other people around them. Kate liked her. Mara was easy company, and it had nothing to do with Gabe or Wes. Did this count as the coffee Mara had offered at the dance? Kate hoped not. They ate beside the newly moved table until somebody needed Mara and Penny appeared looking for Kate.

By then Eileen had stopped working. Kate noticed because Eileen was sitting on an upturned crate beneath the shelter beside the packing shed, something Kate had not seen her do all morning. Penny sat beside her with her bucket between her feet.

“You okay?” Kate asked.

Eileen waved away the concern. “I’m tired, not dying.”

Kate smiled and crouched beside them. “You’ve done a lot.”

“I’ve done half what I used to do and it feels like twice as much.” Eileen looked out toward the rows and flexed her fingers. “That’s the part nobody tells you about getting older. Your head remembers exactly what a full harvest day feels like. Your back has other ideas.”

There was no self-pity in her voice. Just fact. Eileen rubbed one hand over her thigh and gave Kate a small smile. “This is why I finally sold the place. I can still do a morning like this and enjoy it. I couldn’t do day after day anymore, and an orchard doesn’t care whether you’re tired.”

Kate sat beside her. For a moment they watched Alan and Janice working together farther down the row. “You miss it,” Kate said.

“Some parts.” Eileen looked toward the full bins. “Not all of them.”

Penny had been rummaging in her bucket. Suddenly she frowned. “My apple’s gone bad.”