Linda O’Connor watched as the officer got back into his car and drove down their road, a cloud of pale brown dust in his wake. Then she turned to her son, who had his head back under the hood of the tractor. She felt a familiar twinge of disbelief. How was this lanky man, his back brown from working in the sun, her little boy? And how had that curious, charming child become this man? The charm was still there, but the curiosity seemed to be gone. For her firstborn she had imagined travel, college, and adventure. She had imagined him breaking hearts, but not hers.

Somewhere along the way he had gotten stuck. There was no specific event that she could point to. No clear division between the curly-haired boy who played soccer and climbed trees out in the orchard until well past dark, and the young man who lied to her with a smile, who was content to pass the weekends piling up beer cans, and who barely left the town, let alone the country. It was just a series of small things—some trouble at school, putting off applying to college—that had finally culminated in his arrest, and the realization, for her at least, that he wasn’t just taking a break, or finding his way. He wasn’t going to college, and he wasn’t going to explore the world. This was his life.

Not that running the orchard was a bad life, but Trip seemed to take no particular pleasure in it. Rather, working here had simply been the easiest of all of his options. The orchard was her baby, her passion. It was what she had dreamed of when she was first married and living in cramped base housing while her husband, Sean, was serving in the marines.

The property belonged to Sean’s grandparents, but it hadn’t been properly tended to in decades. They’d visited once, and Mrs. O’Connor had fallen in love with the overgrown orchard and the tumbledown red barn. Rabbits bounded through the tall grasses and apples grew on the spreading, unpruned trees. The fallen fruit lay on the ground, and the aroma of the rotting apples smelled sweet to her, with the promise of fertile soil and rebirth. When Sean had a chance to leave the marines, she convinced him to use the money they’d saved to buy out his cousins’ interest in the property and start the farm. Having grown up around farmers, he knew that a farm could break you. The only question was whether it would get your heart or your back first. But he loved her, and so he bought out the property against his better judgment.