Thirty years old.
Thirty years ago.
Thirty (twenty-nine and some) years ago, the twins turn thirty. It’s a small party (about twelve) in a large venue (the orchard). The affair is subdued. Sasha sulks continuously, drinking rainy punch until she’s very day-drunk and then, because she’s thirty now, very hungover. She’s been home for a few weeks. It’s a headache. Everything is a day-drunk headache.
Autumn isn’t coming. She called to say so, days ago, but Sasha still stares at the gate, mood growing worse by the minute. Finally, she ditches that party, the grocery store chocolate cake, and her sister, who is trying really hard. She is frayed, too, heartbroken, too. Because Jason left for good, after he made all the arrangements that become necessary after a death. Jason left, and Russ is buried, and Honeysuckle House is quietly for sale. Sasha abandons their birthday and goes walking.
That’s when she wanders too deep into the orchard, when it takes her places she hasn’t been invited before. Maybe it’s the land that decides. Maybe it is the last plea.
Sasha finds the pond, and Lil finds her, and for the first time, they fight a fight they’ll have again and again and again.
They’ve been here before. Here are the highlights:
Sasha, soberer by the minute: I should be surprised. I should be completely thrown by the fact that you would have hidden whatever this place is from me our entire lives. And Mom too. But of course I’m not. Of course you did this. And then you still resented me leaving! Who wouldn’t leave?
Lil, her eyes full of fear and righteousness: Of all the parts of the orchard, Sasha, I swear…this is the one part I’m supposed to protect you from. There’s only one, okay? Two of us, sure, but there’s only one person who takes this task. I can’t—I can’t—I can’t share it with you and be sure you’re safe. But I was wrong. No one is safe. Not even me.
Sasha learns the secret she was disinherited from by their mother. She hears, for the first time of many times, the riddle of the tree’s offering, and the pond’s hunger, and the Clearwater responsibility.
Lil: Mom said that they’re an offering. The tree is an arm the pond reaches out to us. They’re a—gift.
Sasha: Or a trick?
Lil: She always said the gift was too great for anyone to bear.
It’s a conversation they’ll repeat many, many times to each other, forgetting and remembering in endless cycles. Again and again, they try to save the town, telling the same story together like players to an empty auditorium.
But not the first time. The first time, they break everything.
There is no festival. It is a few days after their birthday, and Sasha still has the pecan she took. She holds it until it is warm, then forgets it in a pocket, and finds it again. Things get rapidly worse. No one has seen Lou, who is either locked in his shop or taking long walks in the fallow orchards alone. Dale’s wife, Kitty, loses her leg to a trap she stumbled upon in the woods. Some bureaucrat from the city has looked over their bridge, the one bridge on the one road in or out, and found it unsafe.
Sasha goes out to the Keller Orchard, the house eaten through with vine where tiny animal bones crack underfoot. Later, she’s in the kitchen, making an omelet. That’s when Lil bursts in, eyes wild and enraged, storms past her to brace herself against the sink.
“He sold,” she snaps out. “To Theon.”
One of Sasha’s eggs slips from the counter and cracks on the floor. Theon. That newcomer who seems to be everywhere these days, chatting up the people who are selling, buying dying farms, doing nothing with them but letting them rot. Sasha has been surveying for Dale and seen the evidence for herself.
“Jason sold to him,” Lil repeats as if she still can’t believe it. “That’s the last one. The last of the major orchards besides us.” She hunches her shoulders. “We’re all that’s left.”
Sasha puts her spatula down. She leaves her tortilla de huevos to burn. She can see it all now. Their whole lives, the generations before, reduced to rubble. This land was once undesirable for farming besides pecan trees, but the corporations will find a way. Tear out the trees and level the ridge and fill this place with some cheap, soil-stripping crop. A monoculture. Fields of corn like marching soldiers. The kudzu will swallow the town whole.
What do you care? a part of her whispers. This place doesn’t want you. You are an exile. Let it all go, and never look back.
Her body says no.
“What do we do?” Sasha murmurs, watching her sister’s face closely.
Lil raises her head, and she’s coldly determined. “I won’t sell. I’ll die first.”
The house will dry to kindling and burn, or it’ll fall into the ground. And maybe Sasha can escape, rip out her roots and go—but Lil never will. She’ll haunt these rooms, tend scab on these trees, live food stamp to food stamp. She’ll grow stooped and bitter and lonely, but she’ll remain.
“It’s our home.” Lil’s eyes return to the trees. The anchor that will drag her down. “Even if I wanted to sell, I think it’d kill me anyway.”
How long will you hold on when your world is gone? Sasha wonders, but doesn’t have to ask.
Forever, Lil will say. Forever.
It’s seeing that future in the desolation on Lil’s face that has Sasha reaching in her pocket for her last trick.
“What are you—” Alarmed, Lil swipes at it.
“Stop.” Sasha holds it out of her reach, feeling the cool weight in her palm.
“That could kill you!” Lil eyes it again, poised like Sasha’s holding a knife. “We don’t know what they do. Mom didn’t know and she…”
“I don’t think it will.” Sasha hasn’t been privy to this secret for very long, but she’s lived with enough of her own, trying to bear truths alone, long enough to put two and two together. “You just told me you’ll die here anyway. And I just realized that I’m not leaving you here alone again. Ever.”
The air crackles with summer lightning, the day sitting heavy around them. It’s now or never.
“I think I understand the gift,” Sasha says. She holds out the gilded treasure she stole from the pond.
It’s too great for anyone to bear. Any one. One. Lil watches her, face tight with horror that melts into grim resignation. And just a hint of peace.
Mom did it alone.
We can do it together.
They break the husk between their palms and fish the golden pecan from inside the depths. It falls apart in two pieces in Sasha’s hands.
In their kitchen, all they can hope for is more time. For protection as strong as the husk of a nut.
Lil takes her sublime fragment with hesitation. Her eyes tentative with wonder. Are you sure? Are you sure?
“It’s you,” Sasha says. “And me.”
Together, they eat.