Chapter 4

Briar

A week after the announcement, Varne started doing what Varne always did in September: gearing up for the Apple Festival like it was a military operation.

The committee formed, the meeting schedule went up on the community board, and the usual round of planning began—venue logistics, vendor assignments, the harvest showcase, and the Harvest Crown, which was the part of the whole thing that everyone pretended wasn't a big deal while treating it like it was extremely a big deal.

The Crown had been around since before I was born. Every year, the committee selected a candidate from each of the main farming families to represent the season. It was ceremonial. It was decorative. It was, as far as I could tell, mostly an excuse for the older half of Varne to feel like things were still done properly.

Isolde had won it three years running.

I found out my name was on this year's preliminary list by accident. I was walking past the notice board outside the town hall on my way to pick up a parts order and I stopped because I saw Harlow on the list twice—once for Isolde, which was expected, and once for me, which was not.

I stood there for a second.

I had not put my name in. Our father would not have put my name in. Which meant someone else had, and I had approximately zero ideas about who would have done that or why.

I told myself it didn't matter. The preliminary list wasn't the final list—the committee would meet and sort it out, and my name would probably come off the same way it had come on, quietly and without ceremony. I picked up my parts order and went back to the farm.

The committee met two days later, in the small conference room off the main hall of the town building. I wasn't there for it. I had no reason to be there.

I was walking past on my way to the hardware store when I noticed the door wasn't fully shut.

I stopped.

I shouldn't have stopped. I knew I shouldn't have stopped. But I could hear voices inside, and one of them was my father's, and I stood there like an idiot and listened.

The list was being reviewed. Names were being confirmed or moved. I heard Isolde's name go through without comment—fourth year, no objections, as expected.

Then they got to mine.

My father's voice was the same as it always was. Even. Unhurried. The voice of a man who did not consider this a difficult thing.

"She's not the right kind of Harlow for this," he said.

That was it. No explanation. No discussion.

No one said anything back.

Thirty seconds later someone moved on to the next item on the agenda.

I walked away from the door. Down the hall, through the main entrance, out onto the street. I kept walking until I was past the hardware store and past the pharmacy and out the far end of town, and then I took the back road to the farm because it was longer and I didn't want to run into anyone.

I went to the orchard.

The trees were still about three weeks from peak, the fruit just starting to color up on the early varieties. I walked until I found the old Honeycrisp row at the east end—the ones my grandmother had planted, the ones that had been there longer than anything else on the property—and I stopped at the fourth tree in because it was the biggest and I put my fist into the trunk.

It hurt. Obviously it hurt.

I stood there with my knuckles pressed against the bark and waited for the sting to work itself out, which took about two minutes, and then I turned around and went back toward the barn.

Emrys's truck was parked outside it.

I stopped walking for a second. The truck was just sitting there, engine off, no sign of him outside, which meant he was in the barn. I could hear something mechanical from inside—a low, uneven sound I recognized after a moment as my old cider press, which had been making a grinding noise for the past two weeks that I'd been meaning to get to and hadn't.

I went inside.

He was crouched down next to the press with the front panel off, doing something to the interior mechanism with a flashlight balanced against his shoulder. He looked up when I came in, clocked me once, and went back to what he was doing.

"Hand me the wrench," he said. "Eleven millimeter."

I looked at the toolbox open beside him. Found the wrench. Handed it to him.

He said thanks and went back to work.

I sat down on the wooden crate next to the press and didn't say anything, and he didn't say anything either, and for a while there was just the sound of him working—metal on metal, the occasional grunt when something was stubborn—and the smell of the barn, which was oil and old wood and apples, and it was the first time since I'd read that notification that I'd sat somewhere and not felt like I needed to be moving.

He worked for another forty minutes. I didn't help and he didn't ask me to. Eventually he stood up, wiped his hands on his jeans, and started putting the panel back on.

"Should be quieter now," he said. "The tension gear was off."

"Thanks."

He started gathering his tools.

"Emrys."

He looked up.

"Was it you?" I said. "The Crown nomination. Did you put my name in?"

He held my look for a moment. Something moved across his face—not much, just a slight adjustment, the kind you could miss if you weren't watching for it.

"I didn't," he said.

He picked up the toolbox and walked out.

I heard his truck start. I heard it pull out of the yard and head down the road toward town. The sound faded until it was gone, and then it was just me and the barn and the press that wasn't grinding anymore.

He was lying. I was almost certain of it.

I just couldn't figure out why he'd bother.