He Thought I Was an Orphan Until I Went Home novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Orchard Road

Ada walks her land with Rory and meets Daphne, who calls Austin's ex a poor girl with no one. Ada says nothing, and Rory sees all of it.

Rory made eggs.

He put a plate in front of me, sat across the kitchen table, and waited for me to yell.

"You knew about Monday," I said.

"I knew the name was on the calendar," he said.

"I would have told you last night, but you had enough."

"Don't say my name like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I might break."

He looked at me for a second.

Then he almost smiled.

"Okay," he said. "Eat your eggs, Ada."

They were good eggs.

I ate all of them.

After breakfast he handed me a pair of rubber boots two sizes too big and said, "You should see what you own."

So we walked it.

The orchard ran down the hill in long straight rows, and the trees were bare except for a few frost-bitten apples nobody had picked.

He pointed out the cider barn, the old stone dairy, and the pond where his dog liked to swim in August.

He talked about trees the way other men talked about their kids.

I kept looking at his forearm.

A long white scar ran down the inside of it, from the wrist to the elbow, and it moved when he pointed.

"Chainsaw," he said, without turning around. "I was twenty-two and stupid."

"I wasn't looking."

"You were."

"Okay, I was."

"It's fine," he said. "I look at your mouth when you aren't paying attention."

I stopped walking.

He stopped too, a few feet up the row, with his hat pushed back and his grey eyes on my face.

"I'm saying it so you know," he said. "You've got enough men in your life who pretend they aren't looking."

"I don't have any men in my life."

"Good," he said, and kept walking.

My face was hot in the cold wind, and I followed him.

The inn sat at the bottom of the orchard, a long white building with fourteen rooms and a porch swing.

Rory said he had to check on a delivery, and told me to wait in the lobby.

The lobby had a fireplace, a brass bell on the desk, and a woman behind the desk with long chestnut hair.

She was wearing a white wrap dress.

I knew the dress.

I had watched her walk into Phyllis's dining room in it, twelve hours earlier.

My stomach dropped through the floor.

Daphne Larkin looked up.

Her eyes passed over my borrowed boots and my green sweater, and she smiled in a friendly, empty way.

"Hi! Are you here about the housekeeping posting?"

She didn't know me.

She had stood in my kitchen, in my husband's house, at my divorce, and she had never once looked at my face.

"Sort of," I said.

"Oh, wonderful. We're short-staffed. Our new owner's coming Monday, and everyone is so nervous."

She came around the desk and lowered her voice.

"I shouldn't gossip, but I'm engaged, and it's all very new."

"My fiance has a hospitality business, and we're going to ask the owner for backing."

"That's exciting," I said.

"It really is," she said. "He had to get a divorce first."

"It was so sad, honestly. His ex-wife was a kind of charity case, poor thing."

"No family, no money, nothing. His mother took her in out of the goodness of her heart."

I stood very still.

"That sounds hard for everyone," I said.

"It was a nightmare, but Austin handled it so gracefully," Daphne said. "I just hope she lands on her feet."

Behind me, a floorboard creaked.

Rory was standing in the doorway to the lobby, with his hat in his hand.

He had heard the whole thing.

"Daphne," he said. "I need her in the barn."

"Oh, sure! Come back and see me about the housekeeping paperwork," she told me, brightly.

I didn't say anything.

I walked out past Rory and across the lawn and into the cider barn.

I stood in the cold smell of old apples and pressed my fists against my eyes.

I did not cry.

I did not want to give her that.

The door slid shut behind me.

"Say it," Rory said quietly. "Whatever you want to say. Throw something. There's a lot of crates."

"I don't want to throw anything."

"Then what do you want?"

I turned around.

He was standing a yard away, enormous in the dim light, with the dust of the barn in the air between us.

I wanted a hundred things.

I wanted to be somebody.

I wanted to be looked at the way he had looked at me in the orchard.

"I want you to stop being careful with me," I said.

He crossed the space between us in two steps.

His hands came up and cupped my face, rough, warm, and slower than I expected.

I took hold of his coat with both fists and pulled his mouth down onto mine.

He made a low sound in his chest, and then he was kissing me back.

My back met a stack of crates.

One hand slid into my hair.

The other flattened at the small of my back and lifted me against him until my boots left the floor.

He tasted like coffee.

He kissed me until my knees went, and when he finally lifted his head, we were both breathing hard.

"Monday," he said roughly, with his forehead against mine. "Do I introduce you, or do you want to watch?"

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