Katy Stanton noticed the sign first. The, once bright, hand painted lettering, that read Burton’s Apple Orchard, had faded until it was nearly the color of the weathered wood on which it had been so carefully painted long ago. Katy frowned as she turned off onto the lane that led down to her family’s cider mill. As she drove, her frown deepened. The gravel was sparse from the washout rains that came every so often, and overgrown trees were hanging over the road too, low enough that their branches would surely scrape the tops of the suburban SUV’s full of visitors come to pick apples and pumpkins from the surrounding fields. And why hadn’t anyone picked up all of the trash that those same visitors had thrown out of their windows as they left, she wondered.

“The place is falling apart.” she mused as she drove past the parking lots, and turned off onto the small road leading behind a stand of trees to the farmhouse where she had grown up, and where her parents still lived. She flipped her visor up, pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head, and stared forlornly at the house. It, too, looked worn down and just this side of derelict.