Prologue

      Archangel, California

      The air smelled of apples, and the orchard hummed with the sound of bees hovering over the bushels of harvested fruit. The trees were in prime condition, waiting for the harvest workers to arrive. The branches had been pruned in readiness for the ladders, the last pesky groundhog had been trapped and carted away; the roads between the trees had been graded smooth so the fruit wouldn’t be jostled in transport. The morning was cool with a mist hanging among the branches. The sun, ripe on the eastern horizon of the rolling hills, offered the promise of warmth later in the day. The pickers would be here soon.

      Magnus Johansen balanced on the picking ladder, feeling as steady as a man a quarter his age. Isabel would scold him if she saw; his granddaughter would call him an old fool for working alone instead of waiting for the pickers to arrive. But Magnus liked the early solitude; he liked having the whole orchard to himself in the muted hush of the warming morning. He was in his eighth decade of life; God only knew how many more harvests he would see.

      Isabel worried so much about him these days. She tended to hover, like a honeybee in the milkweed that surrounded the orchard. Magnus wished she wouldn’t fret. She should know he had already survived the best and worst life had to offer.

      Truth be told, he worried about Isabel far more than she worried about him. It was the things she didn’t know that weighed upon him this morning. He couldn’t keep her in the dark forever. The letter on the desk in his study confirmed his worst fear—unless a miracle occurred, all of Bella Vista would be lost.

      Magnus did his best to set aside the troubles for the moment. He had risen early to don his denim and boots, knowing today was the day. Over the years, he had learned to judge the moment of maturity for the fruit. Too early, and you had to deal with the inefficiencies of spot picking. Too late, and you risked having fruit that was senescent, breaking down from old age.

      Some mornings he felt his own kind of senescence deep in the marrow of his bones. Not today, though. Today, he felt a surge of energy, and his fruit was at the peak of perfection. He’d performed the starch iodine test, of course, but more importantly, he’d bitten into an apple, knowing by its firmness, sweetness and crunch that the time had come. Over the next few days, the orchard would be as busy as a beehive. He would send his fruit to market in the waiting boxes, each with a bright Bella Vista Orchards label.

      A trio cluster of glossy, crimson-striped Gravensteins hung several feet out on a branch above his head. Hard-to-reach limbs were usually pruned, but this one was productive. Carefully aware of the extent of his reach, he leaned forward to pick a trio of apples and add them to his basket. These days, most of the workers preferred the long bags, which made two-handed picking easier, but Magnus was old school. He was old, period. Yet even now, the land sustained him; there was something about the rhythm of the seasons, the yearly renewal, that kept him as vigorous as a much younger man. He had much to be thankful for.

      Much to regret, as well.

      As he captured the apples on the high limb, his ladder wobbled a bit. Chastened, he left the rest of the branch for the gleaners and climbed down.

      As he moved his picking ladder to another tree, he heard the frantic whir of a bee in distress in the milkweed. A honeybee, greedy for the abundant nectar of the tangled blossoms, was trapped in the flowers, a common occurrence. Magnus often found their desiccated bodies enmeshed by the sticky seedpods. Modern farmers tried to eradicate the milkweed, but Magnus allowed it to flourish along the borders of the orchard, a habitat for bees and monarch butterflies, finches and ladybugs.

      Feeling charitable, he liberated a trapped and furiously buzzing bee from the sticky down, releasing a flurry of seeds parachuted by feathery umbrellas. With no notion that the sweetness was deadly, the bee immediately dove back into the hedge and returned to sipping nectar, the risk of getting caught obliterated by its hunger.

      Magnus moved on with a philosophical shrug. When nature drew a creature to sweetness, there could be no stopping it. He moved his ladder to the next tree, positioning it for maximum efficiency, and climbed to a lofty perch. There, his head above the branches, he inhaled the glory of the