Beyond the Spring Breeze: The Orchard Summer novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Bud Break

The first tree opened on the eighth of May, a Friday, at about six in the morning.

I knew before I saw it.

I woke in my room with the window shut, and the whole house smelled faintly of sugar.

I lay there and listened to my own heart.

Then I got up and put on my jeans and my boots and my faded green cap, and I went down through the dark kitchen.

All the kitchen windows were closed and locked, as they had been since the first of May.

I hadn't decided to lock them.

My hands had done it, the way they do it every year, and my mother had looked at the latches and said nothing.

I went out the back door.

The grass was soaked with dew, and the east was pink.

The open tree stood in the third row of Cortlands.

It was the one nearest the end of the row, with a black scar on its bark from a lightning strike.

Every tree in the orchard had been tight and pink at the tips the day before.

This one had opened, all at once, in the night.

I stood under it and looked up.

The petals were thin and pale, with a flush of pink at the edges, and the whole branch trembled in the cool air.

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