Chapter 3

Briar

I didn't go home.

I drove past the Harlow turnoff without slowing down, and then I drove another half mile into town, and I parked in front of The Burrow because it was the only place still open and I didn't have anywhere else to be.

The bar was quiet at this hour—two guys at the counter I half-recognized from somewhere, the owner doing his end-of-night routine with the kind of unhurried slowness that meant he'd rather everyone just leave. He was half-deaf and had been running this place since before I was born, which meant he'd seen enough late-night nonsense to not be curious about mine.

Emrys Crane was in the corner booth.

Two glasses on the table. One in front of him, one across from it, like he'd been expecting company.

He looked up when I walked in. Didn't seem surprised.

"Took you a while," he said.

"I had somewhere to be first."

"I know." He nodded at the glass across from him. "Sit down."

I sat. The drink turned out to be whiskey, and it was the cheap kind, which was fine. I wasn't in a position to complain about anything right now.

He didn't ask what happened. He just waited, turning his own glass in slow circles on the table, giving me a minute to settle.

That was the thing about Emrys—he didn't push. Half the time he didn't even ask. He just sat there being easy to be around until you forgot you were supposed to be falling apart.

"Okay," I said finally. "What's the offer?"

He leaned back. "Same-day wedding. You and me, Apple Festival weekend, whatever venue I can still get. We show up, we do the thing, we make sure they see it." He said it like he was reading off a grocery list. "I don't want to go to any of the family harvest stuff this year and I need a reason. This covers it."

I looked at him. "That's it? That's your reason?"

"That's my reason."

"You want to skip the harvest dinner."

"I want to skip about six different harvest dinners, plus the orchard showcase, plus whatever thing my mother is planning that she hasn't told me about yet but that I know is going to take up an entire weekend." He picked up his glass. "This solves that."

I almost laughed. It was the most low-stakes reason anyone had ever given me for anything, and somehow it made more sense than if he'd given me a real one.

"Why me?" I asked.

"What do you mean, why you?"

"Why not someone else? You know other people."

He thought about it for a second—not like he was stalling, more like he was actually considering how honest to be. Then he said: "Because you were going to do something worse on your own anyway."

"That's not an answer."

"Sure it is." He looked at me steadily. "You're sitting in a bar at two in the morning after going to his house. You're not done yet. You're going to do something, and it's going to be bad, and it's going to make you look like exactly the person everyone in this town already thinks you are." He picked up his drink. "This way, at least it's something they can't argue with. You show up in a wedding dress on the same day he does, you walk away clean. No drama, no scene, no one gets to say you couldn't handle it."

I sat with that for a moment.

He wasn't wrong. That was the annoying part. I had absolutely been planning to do something worse.

"Same venue?" I said.

"If I can get it. Separate halls, obviously."

"Obviously."

"And a separate entrance. I'm not—"

"Obviously," I said again.

He nodded. "Then we're good?"

I looked at him across the table. Emrys Crane, who I'd known my entire life as a peripheral figure—Callum's younger brother, the one who fixed engines and skipped family obligations and had never once, in my memory, done anything he didn't want to do.

"Deal," I said.

We shook on it. His hand was warm, grip easy, like this was a completely normal transaction. Maybe for him it was.

I drove home after that.

My parents were still up when I got in, which I hadn't expected. They were in the living room with the lamp on, my mother with a cup of tea and my father with the news on low. They both looked up when I came through the door.

What my mother said was: "Isn't it wonderful about Isolde? She's found such a good match."

Not where have you been. Not it's two in the morning. Not even are you okay, which, granted, they probably already knew the answer to.

Just: Isolde. Isolde and her good match.

"Yeah," I said. "Great."

I went upstairs.

My room was exactly the same as it always was. Same furniture I'd had since high school, same window that stuck in the frame when the weather changed, same shelf of things I kept meaning to go through and never did. I sat on the edge of the bed and didn't turn the light on for a while.

Eventually I reached under the bed and pulled out the crate I kept my grandmother's stuff in. Old notebooks, mostly. She'd been the one who started the apple pressing operation on the Harlow farm, back when it was still just for the family, and she'd written everything down—formulas, temperatures, which varieties worked together and which didn't. Her handwriting was small and even, and reading it always made me feel like I was borrowing some of her certainty.

I flipped to the last page she'd ever written on.

The best harvests come after the worst frosts.

I stared at that for a minute.

Then I picked up my phone and texted Emrys.

I need the date confirmed by morning.

The reply came back in about thirty seconds.

Already done.

I read that twice. Already done. Not I'll check first thing or I'll try to sort it out. Already. Done.

I sat there looking at those two words for longer than made sense.

He'd booked it before I agreed. Before I even texted him after leaving The Burrow, which meant he'd done it—what, while he was sitting there waiting for me? Before that? How long had he had this plan?

I put the phone down on the nightstand.

My grandmother's notebook was still open on my lap, that last line sitting there like it had been waiting for me specifically.

After a minute, I closed it. I put it in the bag by the side of the bed—the one I was slowly filling with things I wanted to have somewhere else.

Then I lay down and stared at the ceiling until I fell asleep.