Page 1 of Apple of My Eye

Chapter One

Eloise

The Best Things About Coming Home

– Iced tea (preferably brewed in the sun by Mom)

– Listening to thunder from the front porch

– Sleeping underneath a quilt

– Fresh air (this is totally underrated)

– Walking down the hill to get the newspaper

– Nightly games of gin rummy with Dad

– Getting woken up by the rooster (I’ve never understood why people hate this)

– Watching the bees

– JJ, obviously

The country unfurls like a flower as I wind my way towards home.

It’s the end of July, the last crest of summer before we turn the corner into fall.

Boxes are piled high in the back seat. There’s an almost-full bag of bagels next to me, the one thing Dad requests from the city.

Carnation is small enough that we don’t have a good bagel place nearby, and I’d bet my life savings he’ll pretend to be shocked there’s only ten instead of the twelve that he ordered.

I’m whizzing by rolling hills of fertile green farmland, putting the city in my rear-view mirror so fast that I’m unprepared when I cruise right past the WELCOME TO CARNATION sign, a gust of fresh air carrying the smell of apple blossoms and hay into my car.

I take a breath so deep I press on the brakes out of reflex.

The WELCOME TO CARNATION sign is the highest point in the hills that circle around the town’s borders, and you can see all the way into the slight dip of land that makes something akin to a valley, where the rolling farmland evens out in a low spot, right where Main Street sits.

Houses are sprinkled in the surrounding area, mine included, and I roll down the windows all the way, letting the farm breeze settle over me, calming my nerves.

I haven’t been home since Christmas, haven’t seen my parents since they were in Seattle briefly for my graduation a couple months ago.

I spent the summer with my two best friends, Evan and Shari, working in an agriculture lab and volunteering at a kids’ summer camp, where we spent our days washing sticky hands and mulching baby pine trees under the tagline of ‘teaching the next generation how to farm’.

Usually, I’m practically salivating at the promise of a freshly baked blackberry cobbler when I return home, but this time I feel a pit of dread in my stomach instead of the familiar sense of comfort.

But then again, I’ve never lied to my parents like this before.

I turn onto our gravel drive and pass through a break in the wooden fence that surrounds our property, rolling underneath the ANDERSON FAMILY APPLE FARM archway.

I come to a stop at the top of the driveway, right in front of the garage.

As I get out, my gaze falls on the hill that looms behind our 1900s farmhouse, the hill that marks the start of the Parker’s property.

I’ve known our next-door neighbors, the Parkers, since I was little.

Their daughters, both older than me, have moved away, leaving their parents to run the apple farm on their own.

After a bad harvest last year, they are one season away from going bankrupt, the whole town knows it.

I’ve spent all year trying to figure out how to save my family’s farm from the same fate and buying out the Parkers might just be the solution.

We could use the extra land to switch to regenerative agriculture, which is better for the planet and our wallets.

It’s a feasible plan, but it requires a little sacrifice.

I had to turn down a job offer for an up-and-coming agricultural research lab and spend my summer working on the loan application to buy the Parkers out—the last thing I have left to do is tell my parents.

As if on cue, Mom steps out onto the front porch, waving frantically.

‘I thought I heard the car.’ She beams. Our front door swings closed behind her, the lion door knocker that’s older than the house itself clanging.

She hurries down the front porch steps towards me, her arms outstretched for a hug.

I do my best to ignore the guilt tugging at my conscience from keeping something so big from her.

But I can’t tell her about the plan until the Parkers declare bankruptcy.

Mom and Dad live by small-town ethics and going behind your neighbor’s back to buy their land before they’re trying to sell is definitely not in the code of conduct.

I take in a deep breath, smelling grassy meadows with just a hint of sweetness from Mom’s signature honeysuckle perfume. ‘I missed you, Mom,’ I murmur into her shoulder.

‘I missed you too, sweetie,’ she replies.

A swallow swoops overhead, the perfect accent to the dusky evening sky as I lug my first round of stuff out of the car. In sync, like usual, Mom and I unload, falling back into an easy rhythm. For a moment I feel how I always feel when I get back to Carnation—like I’ve stepped back in time.

In my room, everything is exactly as I left it.

Evening light spills through the tulip motif on the stained-glass window, dancing across the old wood floor.

Dust motes puff up into the air, shifting in the rays, as I plunk my box of books onto the floor.

The first thing I unpack is a picture of Evan, Shari and me on our last day of class.

Evan had just gotten frosted tips, reminiscent of ’90s boy bands, and they’re sticking out from beneath his graduation cap.

Shari is laughing, her arms spread wide around the two of us.

I miss them already. I put the picture next to the one I have of JJ, mid-stride, prancing across our back pasture.

I hear heavy footsteps on the stairs and smile.

Dad’s home. He bursts into my room smelling like hay and dust, and he wraps me into a gruff hug.

I squeeze a little tighter than usual. He isn’t a big talker, Mom tends to communicate for the both of them, but he communicates his love in other ways—taking care of JJ when I’m not home, never letting me win when we play gin rummy, and the best hugs.

He beelines to the bag of bagels sitting on the floor, rummaging through them with gusto before picking up the bag and inspecting the bottom. ‘Hmm,’ he muses, ‘the bottom is intact but .?.?. there seems to be some bagels missing.’

I roll my eyes, but I can’t hide my smile. It’s good to be home.

‘I’ll get the rest of your boxes,’ he tells me. ‘You go say hi to JJ. I swear he has a second sense for when you’re coming home—he was agitated all day.’

Happily, I accept his offer and run down the stairs, taking them two at a time, bursting through the back door as Dad’s voice grunts behind me, ‘What on earth have you got in these boxes? Gold bars?!’

JJ nickers as soon as I let myself into the northernmost barn.

I tap the worn wooden plank that hangs low over the door—‘North Barn’, it reads.

All the barns on our property are named like that—Central, East and West. East is the smallest, and used to be my favorite, home to an infamous rope swing that broke my childhood best friend Lily’s nose in the fifth grade, and also to my favorite reading nook, an elevated loft of hay bales, with old, cracked windows, that are perfect for filtering out the harshest of the sun.

Central and West are our working barns, where we park our machinery in the off season and store supplies.

North Barn was built when I was ten, when I got the thing I dreamed of most in the world—a chestnut-colored standardbred horse, and in my throes of ten-year-old boy-band excitement, I named him JJ after Joe Jonas, something Lily has never let me live down.

‘Hi, buddy.’ I hand him an unripe apple I pulled from a tree on my way inside.

He lets out a soft whinny of happiness and nudges his muzzle against my cheek in thanks and greeting.

As he chomps away, I use my free hand to pet his downy neck, leaning in to press my cheek against his coat.

‘I sure am glad I don’t have to lie to you,’ I whisper, looking into his big brown eyes.

But he has no time for my existential crisis—as soon as he’s done with his snack, he paws at the door.

‘And to think, besides my parents you’re the only reason I really wanted to come home,’ I scold him, clipping him into a lead and letting him out of his stall.

I walk him outside to the pen behind the barn, monitoring his steps as we go.

‘You look good,’ I encourage him, feeling overwhelming gratitude for Dad, who’s been tending to JJ ever since he injured his hoof two years ago while he was riding with one of the kids in town.

He was lonely while I was in college so when I left for graduate school, I arranged for some neighborhood kids to ride him while I was away.

It was great for everybody—I didn’t have to let JJ go and he was able to get some exercise. That is, until he got injured.

‘Now we just gotta get someone riding you again,’ I say aloud, ‘someone a little smaller than me.’

JJ neighs, like he can understand me, and he also agrees he is only big enough to be ridden by an adolescent and begins to prance around the paddock. His chestnut mane catches the last dregs of sunlight. I snap a picture of him and send it to Lily.

Views are better in the city I’m sure I text, referencing our constant sarcasm, thinly veiled attempts to get the other one to move.

There is a zero percent chance views in New York City rival a sunset in the farmlands of Washington.

The last text she sent me was a picture of pizza, a giant New York slice, grease pooling in the little pepperonis:

UGH I miss Carnation pizza, this is nothing compared to the local Domino’s :/

Catch up soon? I tack onto my message.

Being home usually makes me miss Lily, but I feel her absence even more acutely today.

Last time she was home we did exactly what I’m doing now, watched JJ stretch his legs as we drank a beer and the sun sank behind the hills, gossiping about people we went to high school with, dreaming about our futures, Lily getting promoted at the fashion magazine she works for in New York and me as a farmer in Carnation, something Lily claimed she didn’t understand.

‘It’s just so early ,’ she told me. ‘Don’t you want to do a little more exploring before you tie yourself down? ’

I didn’t know if this was just another attempt to get me to move or if she was tapping into something I had been worried about—was I ready to settle into such a small town, such a demanding job, forever ?

‘I did the lists,’ I confessed.

Lily levelled me with a serious gaze. ‘And your pro/con list told you to move home?’

I shrugged. Technically it wasn’t a pro/con list, but I didn’t need to bore her with semantics.

I make lists for everything, so making a ‘What Do I Do After College’ list was par for the course.

There is nothing better than pulling thoughts from my head and rearranging them into order.

Once I see them on a page, I can stop holding onto them.

I can feel the space it leaves behind in my brain for other things.

I have lists on my phone for everything under the sun.

Reasons I hate biking, recipes I want to learn from my mom, gas stations between the farm and school that don’t stock expired potato chips.

‘But how will you meet a man?’ Lily whined. ‘The only ones left in Carnation are like .?.?. Josh and Burt. Ew, what if you end up with Burt.’

I laughed out loud. ‘Lily, I am not going to end up with Burt. Also, you’re one to talk—you haven’t met a man and you live in the busiest city in the world. I am not wasting my time on that right now. I’m in save-my-family-farm mode, remember?’

Lily rolled her eyes, grumbling that I was being a hermit, and changed tack. ‘But there’s so much out in the world you haven’t done.’

‘You’re acting like I don’t live within driving distance of an airport.’

‘But you can’t explore in Carnation!’

‘Oh right, because you moved to New York suddenly you’re the explorer expert?’

‘Just call me Dora,’ she deadpanned.

I wish she was here to celebrate with me now that I’ve finally done it—I’ve committed to saving my family farm. Now everything just needs to go according to plan.