Lowering her phone, Nina again looked through her car window, but instead of staring upward, her eyes dropped to the land. Emaciated orange trees, their branches bare and dry, grew along the road. They were the fruitless stragglers of a long-abandoned orchard. The familiarity of its ruin comforted Nina. She’d never seen the orchard flourish, though it must have once, if only for a few sweet years. To her, the emptiness and silence were home. This wasn’t a ghost town. Not when the heart of her family still beat within the land.
