The merchant handed me the invoice.
It confirmed the delivery of our entire harvest. In the space reserved for the owner, someone had forged Daniel’s signature.
The date was from the previous week.
Daniel was already dead.
Monica practically snatched the paper from the merchant’s hands.
“I just wanted to keep the fruit from going to waste!”
“You signed in my husband’s place,” I replied.
The merchant took out his phone to call the police. Monica backed toward her garage, but the neighbors had already started talking: two of them had seen her trailer coming into and leaving our garden during the night.
I leafed through Daniel’s ledger.
One page, folded at the corner, bore Monica’s name. The previous year, he had recorded missing crates after every harvest. He had caught her taking fruit and told her not to enter our property again.
I had never known.
Under those notes, Daniel had written down what he planned to do with this harvest: sell some of the apples to the merchant, keep supplies for the children, and bring the rest to the community kitchen where he sometimes volunteered.
Monica had heard about the sale. She knew the day the merchant would come. She had waited until we were away to take the fruit and pretend she was the person responsible for delivering it.
“I was planning to give you a share,” she said.
Ben slowly removed his father’s cap.
“You said he wasn’t here anymore.”
For the first time, Monica had nothing to say.
The police recorded the witnesses’ statements, photographed the truck, and took the invoice. The fruit that was still there was returned to us. Monica had already sold several crates; she had to reimburse their value.
The merchant offered to postpone his purchase while we sorted through the apples. Two neighbors helped us carry them to the house.
That evening, Ben found a half-peeled paper star stuck to one of the crates.
“Dad would have been sad to see the branches broken,” he said.
I looked at the trees through the window.
“Yes. We’re going to take care of them.”
A few weeks later, Ben helped me prune the damaged branches. He repeated the movements Daniel had taught him, slowly, with a seriousness that made my heart ache.
We couldn’t save every apple. But we had kept enough fruit to make applesauce, fulfill the merchant’s order, and fill several crates for the community kitchen.
Ben placed the last one beside the door.
“Dad said the trees would keep feeding us.”
I put the cap back on his head.
“He was right. And now you know how to take care of them.”
In the spring, new blossoms appeared on the branches we had thought were lost.
