Chapter 10 - What the Blossoms Did Not GuaranteeSpring success brought new problems.
Anna welcomed them.
Blossoms did not guarantee fruit.
A late freeze could destroy everything.
Insects could damage young apples.
Disease could spread.
The pigs could overwork the soil if she kept them under the same trees too long.
So Anna changed the system.
She moved half the group into an adjoining pasture.
Rotated the others through orchard sections.
She stopped treating the pigs as a desperate experiment.
Now they were part of farm management.
That distinction mattered.
The trees responded unevenly.
Five did not recover.
Anna eventually accepted they were dead.
She marked them for removal after summer.
At first this felt like defeat.
Then she realized the goal had never been to force every tree to live.
It had been to find out what still could.
Thirty-six living trees were enough.
Far more than anyone predicted.
The apples grew.
Small at first.
Green.
Hard.
The fruit merchant from town visited in June.
He examined the crop.
“You’ll have something to sell.”
“How much?”
“Too early.”
Anna smiled.
Finally, someone else willing to admit uncertainty.
He offered an advance.
Anna accepted only part.
Enough to pay Samuel Price.
Enough to reduce one farm debt.
Not enough to promise fruit she did not yet possess.
Harold stayed away.
Months earlier Anna had thought she needed an apology.
Now she was less certain.
An apology would be words.
Her life had become very interested in evidence.
Then one afternoon Harold appeared at the road.
He did not approach the gate.
He removed his hat.
Anna waited.
“I was wrong.”
She said nothing.
“About the pigs.”
“Yes.”
“And the orchard.”
“Yes.”
He swallowed.
“And what I did that day.”
Anna’s expression changed.
He looked embarrassed.
“I had no right.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
Anna did not say she forgave him.
She did not know if she did.
Instead she said:
“Don’t ever put your hands on another woman because she tells you no.”
Harold looked down.
“I won’t.”
Anna hoped that was true.
He left.
She watched him go.
Then returned to work.
The apology did not heal her.
But it did something.
It placed responsibility where it belonged.
On him.
The slap had never been proof she was weak.
It had been proof Harold had failed to control himself.
That evening Anna opened Thomas’s ledger.
Under the line she had written months before—
42 alive.
She added:
Harold apologized.
Then, after thinking about it, she wrote one more line.
May you like
34 trees carrying fruit.
The second fact mattered more.
