The Anonymous Notes That Destroyed My Wedding novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: Hail

I looked at the man in the fleece vest for a long time.

He had his arm around Shane.

"He sold that man his house," Megan said. "Shane gets a commission on every friend he has."

"So Shane's client gets a vote on our farm."

"One vote."

"One's all he needed. He only had to make it late."

The weather radio on the pie-kitchen shelf went off before I could say anything else.

It does that long ugly tone, three times.

Then the flat computer voice.

Severe thunderstorm warning. Grand Traverse County. Large hail possible after midnight.

Megan and I both turned and looked out the back window.

The last tart block was on the back slope, by the water.

Balatons.

They ripen two weeks after everything else.

Three tons, still on the trees, dark and shiny and ready.

Hail splits a ripe cherry like a thumbnail through a grape.

You can't sell a split cherry to anybody.

"Chicago wanted those," I said. "Twenty-four thousand dollars."

"Then we pick them tonight," Megan said.

"Three tons, Megan. In one night."

"We moved four in one night. In pajamas."

Luke was already in the yard.

He'd heard the radio through the screen door.

He had Grandpa's boots on, laced to the top.

Gran had sent them down to cabin three on a breakfast tray the first morning he was back, without a note.

"How many hours?" he asked.

"Maybe seven."

"Two shakers would do it in six."

"We have one shaker."

"The brothers have one." He was already pulling out his phone. "Their tarts are in. Theirs is sitting in their shed."

By eight o'clock there were two shakers on the back slope.

By nine there were eleven pickup trucks parked along the rows with their headlights on high.

The brothers came.

The man who plows our road came.

The church women came with coffee and a cooler of sandwiches, with the mustard on the inside.

The hardware store man brought a generator and four work lights on poles.

The whole back slope lit up white.

Luke drove our shaker.

Megan drove the brothers'.

I ran the frames with the younger brother.

Clamp, shake, red rain, roll the frame, dump the bin.

Again.

Again.

At midnight the wind came around to the west.

The leaves flipped over and showed their pale undersides, all at once, the whole slope.

Gran always said that's the trees telling you to hurry.

At one thirty, lightning went white over the bay, out past Elk Rapids.

At one forty, the last tree came down.

Luke shut off the motor.

Nobody cheered.

Everybody was too tired.

The brothers shook my hand.

The church women hugged me and ran for their cars with their thermoses.

Taillights went down the road in a long red string, people racing home to put their own trucks in their own barns.

Megan drove the last bin to the shed and went up to the house at a run.

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