seems alert and curious, looking out the window at the colorful flash of trees going by.
We haven’t been to Bushy Hill Orchard since Emma was about twelve, but we used to go every year, a family tradition. You are taken out to the orchard in a wagon pulled by a tractor, and you pick as many apples as you please, loading them in gunny sacks. Then it’s back on the wagon to have the apples weighed in the old-fashioned country store, before we sit outside at the picnic tables with paper cups of apple cider and a bag of hot, sugary donuts. I love it all, and I want Dylan to, as well.
It all starts out fine. Dylan is apprehensive about the wagon, but when I help him to clamber up and sit next to me, he seems okay with it. I’ve taken to giving a running commentary of what we’re doing whenever we’re together, and I do this now, raising my voice over the rumble of the tractor.
In the middle of my patter, Nick gives me a gently quelling look, and I realize that everyone on the wagon—all the other happy families—are looking at me a little strangely. Actually, they’re looking at Dylan a little strangely. They can see he’s different.
I shrug it off, telling myself I don’t care. This is what works for Dylan, and I’m going to do it, even when a woman near me gives a heavy, pointed sigh and remarks how nice it would be to be able to hear the birds. She’s being ridiculous, because there’s no way you could hear the damned birds over the sound of the tractor. I ignore her and keep talking.
After about ten minutes of jolting down a rutted dirt road, the tractor drops us off at the orchard—a grove of apple trees, none any more than six feet high, every single one dripping with ripe fruit.
“Let’s pick, guys,” I say cheerfully, and with a sigh to rival the woman on the tractor’s, Josh takes a gunny sack and starts chucking apples into it. Dylan’s hand remains in mine as we walk slowly between the trees, the sky achingly blue above us, the air so clear it practically shimmers. I pick an apple, rosy red and perfect, and put it in the sack. “Do you want to try, Dylan?”
He doesn’t respond, of course, but I’ve become used to that, and I can usually discern a frightened silence from a considering one, the touch of his fingers to mine as visible as a question mark. Now his fingers tighten in mine as he studies a tree and then slowly, so cautiously, plucks an apple from it.
“That’s the way,” I say with more enthusiasm than is probably warranted, but I’m just so happy he’s actually doing this. He’s participating, and maybe he’s even enjoying it. I like to think he is. “You want to pick another?”
It’s painstakingly slow work, as Dylan takes an age to pick just one apple, seeming to study each one in turn with an endearing intensity, but we get there in the end. Our gunny sack is so full, we have to drag it on the ground, which can’t be much good for the apples, as we head back to the tractor.
“This is fun, isn’t it?” I say to Nick as we all clamber back onto the wagon. He stayed with Josh while I went with Dylan, so he hasn’t had the bonding time with Dylan that I’ve been hoping for, but I still feel happy.
“Yeah, it has,” Nick says as he slings his arm around me and gives me a smile. “This was a good idea, Ally.”
I smile back, feeling pleasantly proud, satisfied with how everything has gone and how I’ve orchestrated it. It’s the same feeling I’ve had when I survey our Thanksgiving dinner table, complete with glossy turkey and glinting cranberry sauce, or a Christmas tree laden with ornaments with presents piled underneath—a glowing satisfaction that life is good, that I’ve worked hard to make it so.
So far, this day has exceeded my expectations, and at this point in time that is a great feeling, because I’ve kept my expectations relatively low. With Nick’s arm around me and Dylan seated on my other side, Josh across from us not on his phone, I really don’t think I could dare to ask for anything more from this moment.
After we’ve weighed and paid for the apples, we buy a bag of donuts and some cups of