Chapter 6 - Something Beneath the BarkMarch arrived slowly.
Not warm.
Only less cold.
Anna noticed the change first in the animals.
All forty-two had survived winter.
They no longer looked like the pitiful group she had brought home.
Their shoulders had broadened.
Their legs looked strong.
Their movements through the orchard were steady and purposeful.
Harold had been wrong about them already.
Anna found no satisfaction in that.
Not yet.
The trees mattered more.
One morning, she pressed her boot into the ground beneath the oldest apple tree.
The soil gave easily.
When she lifted her boot, dark earth came with it.
In autumn, the same ground had been pale clay.
Now it crumbled between her fingers.
Anna walked deeper into the orchard.
The piglets moved behind her.
At the far end stood the ugliest tree on the property.
Its trunk had split years earlier.
Three winters had passed without a single visible bud.
Even Thomas had once considered cutting it down.
The pigs had spent more time beneath that tree than almost any other.
Anna placed her hand against the trunk.
Cold.
Rough.
She waited.
Then she looked at a low branch.
Something seemed different.
She leaned closer.
At the joint where a small branch met the larger limb was a faint swelling.
Barely anything.
A person walking past would never notice.
Anna had spent months staring at bare branches.
She knew what bare looked like.
This was different.
She did not touch it.
She went inside.
Made coffee.
Sat at the table.
Then returned an hour later.
The swelling remained.
The next morning it looked slightly larger.
On the third day she found another.
Different tree.
Then another.
Anna began recording them.
March 6 — possible buds on 3 trees.
March 8 — 7 trees.
March 11 — 12.
She did not tell the feed-store owner.
Did not tell neighbors.
Did not tell Harold.
She barely allowed herself to smile.
A bud was not a blossom.
A blossom was not an apple.
An apple was not a harvest.
Farmers learned quickly that every promise in nature came with conditions.
Still, one morning Anna stood beneath the old split tree and felt tears in her eyes.
Not grief this time.
Something quieter.
“You waited long enough,” she whispered.
A pig rooted near her boot.
Anna laughed softly.
“Both of us did.”
Far down the road, a wagon slowed.
Harold Pike sat on the seat.
He looked toward the orchard.
Anna could not tell whether he saw the buds.
He continued driving.
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Three days later, the first white blossom opened.
Anna nearly missed it.
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