Shadows of Summer

The last week of August had a softness to it that felt like it was breathing its own sorrow. The air was cooler, but not cold, and the sky leaned lower, turning the fields to softened hues of pale gold at the edges. Clara walked briskly along the narrow, winding dirt road that ran past the old orchard, her boots crunching on dry leaves and twigs. She kept her eyes on the ground, but, for some reason, she could feel the orchard watching her.

The orchard had been quiet for weeks. Usually in summer, children ran through it, chasing apples or each other, their laughter spilling across the fields. This year, nobody came. Not that it had ever mattered to Clara. She had always been drawn to quiet things.

She paused near the fence at the edge of the orchard. Something fluttered there — a scrap of red cloth caught in the wire. She recognized it instantly. A scarf. Her brother’s scarf. The one he wore every morning before leaving for work.

Her stomach twisted. She hadn’t seen him for months. The city had taken him, and the house at the orchard’s edge had gone quiet. No lights, no sounds, just the hush of late summer. And yet, here was the scarf, bright against the green and brown of the field.
Clara stepped closer, boots sinking into dry grass. She reached for it. When her fingers touched the scarf, a breeze ran through the orchard, bending the branches. She felt it, the slight, almost unnoticeable tug at her chest: the feeling that someone was watching.

The orchard seemed to sigh. Somewhere deep inside it, a branch scraped against another, soft and slow, like a swing moving on its own. Clara froze. The orchard had no swings. She blinked, trying to convince herself it was the wind.

She tucked the scarf into her coat pocket and walked along the edge of the orchard, letting the fence guide her. Some of the apple trees still bore fruit, stubborn red and gold against fading leaves. Others had lost everything, bare and brown. The ground was dotted with fallen apples, soft and bruised.

She remembered the last morning she had seen her brother before he left for the city. He had been quiet, packing a small bag with things she did not understand. A notebook, a pocketknife, a small carved bird he had made for her. She had waved as he left, thinking he would come back soon. But he had not returned.

The scarf felt heavier in her pocket now. She didn’t know why it was here. She didn’t know if it had been left for her to find or if it had come back on its own.

A faint smell of smoke drifted on the breeze. Someone must have lit a fire somewhere, but the scent made the orchard feel larger, lonelier. Clara noticed a low rise at the far edge of the field. The grass there seemed pressed down, like someone had walked the same path many times. She hadn’t noticed it before. Curiosity pulled her forward.

At the top of the rise, she saw footprints. They were too large for her, pressed deep into the dry earth. They led to a small cluster of trees and came to a stop. Clara’s heart pounded. Could it be him? A neighbour playing a joke? Or something else? The orchard, once familiar, now felt secretive, as if it were holding back something it knew she could not yet see.

She stepped closer, boots slow against the ground. A flicker of movement caught her eye. Behind the trees, something shifted. A shadow, tall and quiet, moving just at the edge of the light. For a moment, she thought it was her brother, taller and more tranquil than she remembered. Then the shadow disappeared.

Her chest ached with the strange mix of fear and longing. She wanted to call out, but her voice would not come. The scarf in her pocket felt like a tether, a piece of him she could hold while she searched for answers she would never get.

Clara turned and walked home, letting the orchard’s silence follow her. Each step felt heavy, as if the wind itself were pressing against her, trying to slow her. When she reached the house at the end of the road, the sky was bleeding orange and purple. August was ending.

She placed the scarf on the dresser in her room. It was bright against the wood, a small proof that something had been there, something she might never understand. She looked out the window at the orchard, the trees dark shapes against the fading light. Somewhere in that quiet, someone — or something—had been there. She didn’t know what.

The first cool breeze of September slipped under her window. Clara shivered and closed it, sitting quietly with the scarf in her hands. She stared at it for a moment. The orchard would wait. The shadows would wait. And she would wait too, holding the small, impossible hope that one day, she might understand what had been left behind in the last light of August.

The air smelled of dry grass and early frost. Birds called to each other in soft, uneven notes, the last of the season. Clara listened. She could not see him, but she felt him in the hush, in the spaces between the trees, in the lingering warmth of a season about to change.

August ended quietly, like it had been waiting for her to notice. Some mysteries never leave, and some sadness never fully fades.