Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel Page A

the chair, lazily watching the rain. I reached up to remove my mother’s earrings that she had let me borrow that morning. When I touched my earlobe, I realized the right one was gone. I stood up from the chair. The last place I had them…where was the last place I had them? My father had complimented the glint of gold in the sun in the… last row of the orchard!
    Before thinking twice, I was out the back door. I ran through the rows and fell to my knees. I crawled up and down the last row. I didn’t care about the time of night or that my chemise would be sullied and dirty from the rich earth. I couldn’t bring myself to look at my mother’s face when I told her I’d lost one of her favorite earrings. She would caress my face, tell me it was only an earring, and mask her disappointment. I had let the rain coat my face and was crawling from one end of the row to the other when a pair of black, silver-buckled boots stepped into my view. These were not the high heels that we are accustomed to in the modern world. These boots were low heeled, made from a thick hide, and covered the man’s legs all the way up to his shins. I followed the length of his legs, up his body, until I looked into the most piercing set of blue eyes I had seen or ever would see. They were framed by dark eyebrows that highlighted the man’s masculine jawbone and thin nose.
    “Having an adventure?” he asked as casually as if he were wondering about the weather.
    Rhode Lewin squatted down on his heels. He had shaggy hair then. As always, he had a proud mouth and a constantly furrowed brow. I was almost sixteen, had never left my parents’ orchard, and the most beautiful man in the world stood in front of me. Well, he looked like a man, though he could have been young, perhaps my own age. There was something in the way he looked at me that told me this boy, despite his smooth cheeks and the youthful expression, was much older than me. As though he had seen the whole world and knew of its many secrets. Rhode wore an all-black ensemble, which made the color of his eyes pop out at me from the impenetrable night.
    I fell back onto the ground. It was wet, and I was soaked through. The mud squished under my heels as I pressed into the ground to move away from the man in front of me. “This is private property,” I said.
    Rhode stood back up, placed his hand on his hips, and looked in both directions. “You don’t say,” he said, pretending as though he didn’t know where he was.
    “What do you want?” I asked. I leaned back onto my hands and looked up at Rhode.
    He walked closer so that there was only a foot of space between us. He extended a hand. I noticed an onyx ring on his middle finger. It was different from any gem I had ever seen before. It was black and solid, flat without any glint or sparkle. He opened his fingers and in the middle of his palm was my mother’s hoop earring. I looked at the hoop and then into Rhode’s eyes. He smiled at me in such a way that I instantly felt something within me that I had never felt before. Something tingled near my heart.
    I stood up quickly, all the while keeping my eyes on the man in front of me. The rain splattered onto the wet ground. I reached out for the earring, my fingers shaking. I was about to touch the gold when I thought for sure he would close his fingers around mine. The rain fell onto his hand, onto me, and his palm was slicked with drops. I looked up at Rhode and snatched the earring with a flick of the wrist and placed my hand back by my side.
    “Thank you,” I barely whispered, and turned back toward my family’s home. In the distance, I could discern the flat shape of the roof even in the dark, rainy night. “I have to go. And so should you—” I said, walking away from him.
    Rhode turned me back to face him with one hand on my left shoulder.
    “I have been watching you,” he said. “For some time now.”
    “I’ve never seen you,” I said, and raised my chin in