Amanda traded her pencil skirts and Manolo Blahniks for jeans and faded leather boots, and her high-paying career as an attorney in New York, for solitude on the farm.
Walking away from her New York life was easier than expected, but then again…
***
She stared at the sun setting behind the rows of apple trees. Most apples were likely to never get harvested. Instead, they would rot and fall to the ground or be ravaged by beetles. She vowed to breathe life back into daddy’s orchard, no matter the cost.
The last happy memory she had of that place was picking apples with him. She longed to hear his voice again, reminding her the proper way to choose fruit for harvesting, to watch him smile as she tried to grab the branches just out of her reach.
But her daddy never was the same after her mama died. It was so sudden. Suicide, they said. After her death, he let everything go, no longer paying the employees, or caring for the trees.
Her fingers touched the chipped paint on the porch railing. A bit of white peeled off and fell to the ground, starkly standing out against the green grass.
The glimmer from her wedding band caught her eye and Amanda hastily pulled it off, ripping the skin on her knuckle. She swallowed the bile rising from her belly, and walked down the splintered stairs, stopping just before the trees. With a look of disgust, she tossed the two-and-a-half carat ring into the hole. It bounced off the gun, making a tink sound.
Using her daddy’s favorite shovel, rusted from years on the field, she filled the hollowed ground with soil. One pile at a time was scooped and dropped until she finished burying her secrets beneath the pale moonlight.
Amanda wiped the sweat from her brow and tossed the shovel aside.
***
…She preferred boots, anyway.
Photo courtesy of Rico Bico/Unsplash
Danielle Dayney 
I love all the gorgeous images in this piece. The changes you made definitely enhanced it too. 😀
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Thanks, Melony!
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I’d like to know a little more about her! 🙂 Is she at the farm for her father, for herself, or both?
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I like how you described the passage of time and the subtle way you lay out Amanda’s back story. Check your pronouns – you have apple trees rotting and falling to the ground.
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Thanks, Nate! Checking now 😉
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I liked the way you worked in her backstory as well. To me, it felt like you left just enough unspoken so one’s imagination can fill in the blanks. Did the guy she was married to try to shoot her, or did she shoot him? Did their relationship fall apart because of the trauma with her parents, or was it doomed from the get-go? So many possibilities. 🙂
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I loved your opening line as I started reading, then loved it even more when I read the last line. I enjoyed the tidbits that gave somewhat of a backstory and read through again thinking maybe I had missed an important detail. Sounds like the beginning to a great story.
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Glad you noticed the beginning and ending! The beginning went in many directions before it landed there.
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Hmm, a mystery gun, an unwanted wedding ring, fleeing the city…your protagonist is very mysterious! I enjoyed the almost Gothic setting of the dying farm.
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Thanks Laura!
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