“Marian and Sharon, my girls, if you are standing under the cherry tree, then I am so very sorry that it came to this, and I want you both to know that I love you with my whole heart.” That was the first line, in the shaky, loving hand of Harold, written in the weeks after his first heart attack. I read it aloud in a voice that did not tremble. Under the white blossoms, a hundred people from the valley stood in the grass without a sound. The petals fell around us like slow snow, and a bee hummed in the branches over my head.
“Here is what I did,” the letter went on. “In the spring of 2008 I put the orchard into the Lindgren Family Trust. Marian has the right to live here and manage it until the day she dies. After that, it goes to Sharon, but only on one condition, which is that she cares for her mother in her own home. No one can mortgage it, sell it, or put a lien on it without the signature of Marian in front of a notary. If you are holding papers that say otherwise, they are not worth the pen. Sharon, my darling, I put the condition in not to punish you. I put it there to keep you close.”
Walt Ecklund rose from the porch swing, leaning on his cane, and handed me a certified copy of the trust. He held up another page. “This is the recorded notice,” he said. “And this is a letter from the bank, which I received this morning. The home equity loan of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is void. Trust property cannot be encumbered without the trustee consent. The bank has already begun the process of reversing the entire amount.” The real estate agent, Trent, shut his portfolio with a snap and slipped out from under the tent, and the three couples in sensible shoes followed him, nodding politely at everybody they passed.
A pale blue letter under a cherry tree reminded a daughter what her father had planted for her all those years ago.
Sharon stood motionless. She wore a pale yellow dress, and her cheeks were so white that her lipstick looked painted on. Beside her, Rick still had his hand raised, as if he had been about to make a point. Deputy Kyle Novak, who used to pick apples for Harold on summer break, walked up the grass with his hat in his hands. “Mrs. Lindgren,” he said, “the bank gave us a copy of the signature on the loan. It is in purple ink. The teller says that only one person in your house uses purple.” The crowd turned, slowly, toward the pen that was still clipped to the front pocket of the dress of Sharon.
“Mom,” she said. Her voice came out in a thread. “I can explain.” I said that I knew she could. I told her I would listen. She looked around, at the faces of the Stroms, at Pastor Mattson, at Nora Bergstrom from the fruit stand, and she started to cry, quietly at first. Rick tried to take her arm, and she pulled away from him. “It was the plan of Rick,” she said. “The loan. The care home. He said you would never know, and the bills were drowning us. He said it was the only way. I thought, one more month, one more month.”
Rick made a sound like a wounded animal. “That is not fair, Sharon. You signed. You did the paperwork. You picked the care home.” She turned on him with a look I had never seen on her face. “I did. I will say so to anyone who asks. I will say it to the judge.” She turned back to me. “Mom, I put you in the laundry room. I sat you beside the dryer, and I let them all laugh. I do not know who I was.” I climbed one step toward her. The petals were in her hair. She looked about nine.
I told her the truth. I told her that I was furious, and that I was heartbroken, and that I would forgive her one day, but not that day. I said she would repay the bank with her own money, every cent, and she would tell the whole story to the prosecutor, and she would go to counseling. And I told her what her father had asked, which was that she come home. Not to a care home. To the farmhouse, where she was born. “The tree is waiting,” I said. “Your father planted it for you. He did not plant it for a sale.”
Deputy Novak asked Rick, politely, to step aside. Rick pleaded guilty to fraud in the spring and was given eighteen months. Sharon was charged with a lesser count and accepted a deal with a year of probation and full restitution. She sold her car and took a job at the fruit stand, selling cherries and apples for a bright smile and a modest wage, and Nora Bergstrom, who never says a gentle word, told me that Sharon was the best clerk she ever had. I did not say anything. I only went home and baked a pie.
Sharon moved back to the farmhouse that summer. She did not ask for her old room. She took the little one at the end of the hall, with the sloped ceiling. She learned to prune the pear trees from Walt Ecklund. She spent every Saturday in the workshop of her father, going through his old notebooks, and found the one he had marked For Sharon, a thick green book in which he had named seventeen varieties of apple. Eleven of them, in his careful print, had her name. She sat with it on her lap all afternoon, and I left her alone.
The next Easter, Sharon set the table herself. She laid it with the good china, and she put me at the head, facing the window, with the cherry tree in full bloom behind the glass. The dining room was crowded and loud, and the mother of Rick sent a card, and I read it, and I put it in the drawer. The laundry room door stayed shut. After the blessing, my daughter looked at me over the ham, with tears standing in her eyes, and said very quietly, “Mom, I would like to sit here, next to you, if that is all right.” I moved my chair to make room.
