Delphic Song

Chapter One

Chapter One

August 18th

The couple was taking their sweet time.

It was hard not to grind my teeth as I watched them. The last customers of the day, and they had been here for two and a half hours already. Since lunch; when I watched them park their car and stroll up the slight hill to our weighing stand, five large and empty bags slung over their arms and the scent of overly excited tourist reaching me across the lawn. You could tell just by looking at them that they were promising costumers. So, it wouldn’t have mattered to me if they had stayed here all day picking apples and enjoying the beautiful weather, as long as they had been gracious enough to leave when closing time rolled around. But no, they were exactly thirty-eight minutes past that point. I was keeping count, for all the good it was doing me. They were in a love bubble that seemed to leave them oblivious to their surroundings. The light was fading from the sky and they were the only ones left in the orchard, and at least to me, both of these facts were obvious hints that we were closed – or at least closing.

I began impatiently tapping my foot as I watched them, willing them to look over at the sun and see how low it was in the sky, or maybe glance at their watches and realize that they had places to be. My annoyance grew as I watched them try to feed each other bites of an apple by hand. As the fruit dropped and rolled away into the grass at their first attempt, I blew out an angry sigh and spun around to begin tidying up the booth, unable to just watch their ridiculous foolishness any longer. I figured I might as well pass the time somewhat productively.

Had they not been laden with bags heavy and overflowing with apples, I would have had asked them to leave by now. But I was worried if I did at this point; it might result in them leaving me with five bags of useless apples and drive off without so much as a tip for such wonderful service. No, it was better to let them stay and reap the cash reward in the end. After all, Dad had promised I could keep all the earnings today as long as I was polite and didn’t abandon my post. And seeing as I had gone over the top with both of those things, I definitely deserved that money. I wiped down the counter with a damp rag and wondered how my best friend, Liam Thatcher, was doing trimming the stray branches of the apple trees. I hadn’t heard a peep from him for the past half an hour, which was quite unusual. Had that couple scared him off?

“We’re ready to weigh these,” a voice said, interrupting my thoughts. Oh, it’s them, I thought. I plastered a smile on my face, hoping it didn’t look to fake, and turned around.

“Great!” I said, piling on the forced enthusiasm. “Did you enjoy yourself today?” The girl nodded, her enthusiasm genuine – and way over the top. “We certainly did! You have such a wonderful orchard. Such beautiful apple trees! And the weather was absolutely gorgeous…”

My smile was getting less and less believable by the second. “Yes, Maine is a lovely place this time of year.” I glanced at the clock, not even bothering to be discreet. In fact, I was hoping they would notice that they were wasting my time and hurry the hell up.

They didn’t catch on quite as I’d hoped.

“Really? This is good weather for the apples, then?” the guy asked. I was one second away from ignoring him completely and walking away so I didn’t have to deal with this small talk. But the size of those bags… there was definitely a lot of weight there, which translated into a lot of cash for me. So I forced what I knew was a phony smile and said, “Yes, they grow quite nicely in the sun. The occasional rain shower helps, too.” If they noticed my flippancy, they didn’t react to it. Before they could get another word in, I grabbed the first bag of apples from them and set it on the scale. I punched in the weight on the calculator and reached for the next bag, trying to ignore them as they blathered on behind me about the weather and the scenery. I finished weighing the bags and did the math on the calculator.