Chapter 2 - Six Trips to the Orchard
Grandpa invited us to dinner the following Sunday.
Mother accepted for all three of us before asking whether I was available. That was typical. What wasn’t typical was the urgency with which she called Brooke immediately afterward.
They spoke behind Mother’s closed bedroom door.
I couldn’t hear every word, but I caught three.
Boxes.
Saturday.
Finished.
Later that night, I emailed my evidence folder to a second account and changed the password on my phone.
By Sunday afternoon, Brooke had finally returned the crossover to our driveway—but not the keys.
Mud coated the tires. The rear cargo area contained small scraps of straw, torn cardboard, and a single dried peach leaf.
I photographed everything.
When I confronted Brooke, she leaned against the kitchen counter and examined her manicure.
“I’m using it tonight.”
“We’re going to Grandpa’s.”
“I know.”
“That car is mine.”
“And Mom said we’re sharing.”
“You’ve had it for two weeks.”
“So?”
The casual cruelty in her voice was almost impressive. Brooke had always possessed the ability to treat another person’s loss as evidence that they were unreasonable.
“Give me the keys.”
“No.”
Mother entered carrying her purse. “Brooke is driving us.”
“I’m not riding in a stolen car while the person who stole it pretends she owns it.”
Mother’s lips tightened. “Don’t start.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
“How?”
“The way you told me to travel.”
I ordered a rideshare.
The driver arrived before they left. As I climbed into the back seat, I saw Brooke watching through the front window. For the first time since taking the keys, she looked uneasy.
Grandpa’s farmhouse sat at the edge of the original orchard, a mile from the smaller, older property where he had been raised. The main house smelled like cedar, roasted meat, and the faint apple-cinnamon candles he burned regardless of season.
He opened the door before I reached the porch.
“Where’s the car I bought you?”
No greeting. No small talk.
His gaze moved past me to the rideshare turning around near the barn.
I had rehearsed explanations during the thirty-minute trip. All of them vanished.
“Inside,” I said. “Please.”
Mother and Brooke arrived seven minutes later in my crossover.
Grandpa stood at the dining-room window and watched Brooke step from the driver’s seat.
He said nothing.
That frightened me more than anger would have.
Dinner began in strained silence. The table looked beautiful—roast beef, potatoes, green beans, baked macaroni, and fresh bread. Grandpa had always believed hard conversations should happen after people were fed.
That evening, nobody ate much.
He sat at the head of the table wearing a pale lavender shirt. Mother sat to his left, her braids arranged in a high bun. Brooke wore a dark green sweater and scrolled through her phone between bites. I sat across from her in the burgundy top I had worn for my birthday.
For several minutes, silverware against china was the only sound.
Then Grandpa put down his fork.
“Nia.”
I looked up.
“Where has your car been?”
Mother answered before I could.
“We’re sharing it.”
Grandpa’s eyes moved toward her. “I asked Nia.”
“She’s making this into something it isn’t,” Mother said. “Brooke’s vehicle needs repairs, so I suggested they share.”
“Suggested?”
Brooke gave a small laugh. “Why is everybody acting like this is a federal investigation?”
Grandpa turned to me again.
I reached into my bag and placed a folder beside my plate.
“Mom took the keys the morning after my birthday. Brooke has had both fobs since then. I asked repeatedly for the car to be returned.”
Mother stared at the folder.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Receipts. Messages. Screenshots.”
“You built a case against your sister?”
“No. I kept a record of what happened.”
Brooke rolled her eyes. “This is insane.”
Grandpa held out his hand.
I passed him the folder.
He read without expression. First the messages, then the rideshare receipts, then printed copies of Brooke’s social-media posts. When he reached the picture outside the storage facility, his jaw tightened.
“Why were you there?” he asked.
Brooke shrugged. “A friend was moving.”
“What friend?”
“You don’t know her.”
“Name?”
Brooke glanced at Mother.
Mother lifted her water glass. Her hand trembled slightly.
Grandpa noticed.
“So you’re tracking where we go now?” Brooke demanded.
“I haven’t said anything about tracking.”
The room went still.
Brooke’s face changed.
It was small—a widening of the eyes, a sudden tension around her mouth—but Grandpa saw it.
“What did you mean by that?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“You asked whether I was tracking where you went.”
“Because of the screenshots.”
“The screenshots show what you posted. They don’t show everywhere you drove.”
Mother spoke quickly. “Dad, this is becoming ridiculous. Brooke borrowed a car. She returned it. Let’s enjoy dinner.”
Grandpa looked at her for a long moment.
Then Brooke, trying to sound bored, said, “I drove out near the orchard a couple times. Is that the scandal?”
Grandpa’s entire expression changed.
“Which orchard?”
“The old one. The farmhouse property.”
“You went onto that land?”
Brooke pushed food around her plate. “Maybe. I don’t remember.”
“How did you unlock the gate?”
“I didn’t.”
“There’s no public road beyond it.”
Mother interrupted. “She probably means she drove past.”
“I went in,” Brooke said, contradicting her without realizing it. “The gate was open.”
Grandpa leaned back.
Nobody moved.
Finally, he reached into his pocket and removed his phone.
“I had GPS installed in that vehicle.”
Brooke’s fork struck her plate.
Mother stared at him. “You tracked Nia?”
“I installed a theft-recovery system before giving her a new car.”
He tapped the screen.
“The dealership activated it the night of her birthday. Once Nia told me she’d had a busy week but couldn’t answer whether she was enjoying the car, I checked.”
“You had no right,” Mother said.
“It is my account and Nia’s vehicle.”
He turned the phone toward us.
The map displayed colored lines across the county.
Restaurants. Shopping centers. Brooke’s friends’ apartments. The lakefront.
Then the locations that mattered.
A storage facility.
An estate dealer.
And Grandpa’s old orchard.
He enlarged the history.
Six separate visits.
Brooke had driven there six times in less than two weeks.
Grandpa looked at her. “You said a couple.”
Brooke’s face had lost its color. “I forgot.”
“Six visits are difficult to forget.”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
Mother turned sharply. “Brooke.”
“What?” Brooke demanded. “You said he wasn’t using anything over there.”
Grandpa’s voice became very quiet. “Using what?”
Mother stood. “We should leave.”
“Sit down, Denise.”
“I’m an adult.”
“Then behave like one.”
I had never heard him speak to her that way.
She slowly returned to her chair.
Grandpa opened the GPS history again.
“First visit, Tuesday morning. You stayed forty-three minutes. Second visit, Thursday night, one hour and twelve minutes. The next morning, you drove to an estate dealer. On Saturday, you returned to the orchard and then went directly to the storage facility.”
He looked at Brooke.
“What did you take?”
“Nothing valuable.”
The answer came too fast.
Grandpa removed his glasses and cleaned them with his napkin.
“I didn’t ask whether it was valuable.”
Brooke’s breathing quickened. “Old dishes. Some pictures. Boxes of papers. Mom said the building needed to be cleared.”
My mother closed her eyes.
“Which building?” Grandpa asked.
“The old farmhouse.”
“How did you get inside?”
Brooke looked at Mother again.
Grandpa followed her gaze.
A memory surfaced then: Mother borrowing Grandpa’s ring of maintenance keys in March, claiming she needed to retrieve holiday decorations from his barn. He had asked for them back twice.
She had said she misplaced them.
“Denise,” he said. “Did you copy my keys?”
Mother’s silence answered.
Grandpa stood and walked to the sideboard. He opened the top drawer.
When he returned, he held a thick envelope.
“I installed cameras after tools disappeared from the orchard last winter,” he said. “They send photographs whenever someone enters the property.”
He placed the first image on the table.
Brooke stood outside the old farmhouse carrying a cardboard box.
The second showed her loading a wooden chest into my crossover.
The third showed Mother at the farmhouse door, using a key.
Grandpa laid down photograph after photograph until the polished table between us looked like a record of a crime.
In the final image, Mother carried a narrow blue box against her chest.
Grandpa stared at that picture longer than the others.
His hand trembled.
“What was inside the blue box?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
Mother whispered, “We didn’t know there were cameras.”
Grandpa’s gaze lifted.
“You believed that made it acceptable?”
“No. I mean—”
“What did you take?”
Mother’s restraint finally broke.
She shoved her chair backward and stood over the table, one palm striking the wood.
“Those things were going to be ours eventually!”
Her voice echoed through the farmhouse.
Grandpa did not flinch.
“They were never yours,” he said.
Mother’s chest rose and fell. “I’m your daughter.”
“Yes.”
“Then who else would they belong to?”
Grandpa looked at me.
Not at Brooke.
At me.
The grief in his face made the room feel suddenly cold.
He gathered the photographs and stopped at the image of the blue box.
“That belonged to Nia’s mother,” he said.
Mother stared at him.
I almost laughed from confusion.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “She’s standing right there.”
May you like
Grandpa’s eyes remained on mine.
“No,” he said softly. “She isn’t.”
