The Cidery
When the snow came their breath turned slow and deep. The orchard stood bare, the apples long since crushed and drained, their juice strained into bottles and tucked away to hibernate in the old barn. Stephen and Marjorie retreated to their room. They still had work to do.
This was how Stephen treated it, like a chore left unfinished. The last piece of business to take care of before the year turned over. So Marjorie sidled up to him, soft and sweet, though warier than she’d been when they were first married. Afterward she molded her body to his in hopeful exhaustion, and they slept. Yet every few weeks when they woke to red drops on white sheets, Stephen’s jaw set a little more. “We’ll try again” turned into “same as last year, and the year before.” Finally he said nothing, and the silence between them rang out over the frozen landscape.
He left when the ground thawed. He packed his trunk, strapped it in the back of the Chrysler, and drove down the front lawn, leaving deep ruts in the wet ground. Two weeks later a letter arrived for Marjorie saying he’d be back when the apples were ripe.
She wouldn’t hold her breath.