My father threw me out on my eighteenth birthday, stole the $3,000 I’d saved from working after school, and used it for my stepbrother. Nine days later, while I was digging through a restaurant dumpster for something to eat, a stranger in an expensive suit called my name and told me my supposedly dead grandfather had left me everything. But there was one condition nobody had warned me about.

The address Richard had given me led beyond the town, along a narrow road lined with stone walls and bare trees.

The house stood at the end of a long drive.

It was larger than I expected, but not grand in the way I imagined an inherited house might be. It had gray shingles, white trim, and a wide porch with two wooden chairs facing the road.

A faded sign near the driveway read:

BROOKS & SONS — ORCHARDS, CIDER, AND PRESERVES

Beyond the house, rows of dormant apple trees stretched over the hillside.

I parked near the porch and stepped out.

A woman in a green coat came from the side of the house carrying a basket of folded linens. She was perhaps in her sixties, with silver hair pulled into a braid.

“You must be Nathaniel,” she said.

I nodded cautiously.

“Who are you?”

“Eleanor Price. I managed the house for your grandfather.”