My husband, Daniel, died twelve days before our apple harvest.
He had cared for those trees his whole life, pruning every branch by hand and teaching our son, Ben, how to tell when the fruit was ripe.
“These trees will keep feeding you, even when I’m gone,” he once told him.
I never imagined how soon those words would matter.
When we returned from Daniel’s funeral, I was carrying our sleeping 3-year-old daughter while Ben clutched his father’s old cap.
Then I heard a branch snap.
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