They sat under the almond tree for hours, though hours didn't pass the same way here.
Eli leaned back against the trunk, Lena's head on his shoulder. She smelled like rosemary and old books.
"This is it?" he asked softly. "The afterlife?"
"It's a piece of it," she said, smiling up at the leaves. "Each person arrives in their own space. Your orchard. My riverbank. For some, it's a house they never built. For others, a memory made real."
He looked around. The light never dimmed. The sky remained golden.
"Why an orchard?"
She chuckled. "Think about it. You spent your whole life planting things. Ideas. Kindness. Time. You didn't harvest much in return. But now—you get to live in the garden you built."
He nodded slowly. It made sense. He remembered reading once that heaven was the place where all the seeds you'd sown came into bloom.
He picked a fig from a low branch. The fruit was warm, like it had just been kissed by the sun. He bit into it—flavor unlike anything he'd known. Sweet, but not sugary. Rich, but not heavy. It tasted like summer mornings, fresh paper, and old jazz.
"Do we stay here forever?"
"For a while," she said. "There are other places. The Orchard is just the beginning.
A place to rest. To remember."
She pulled a folded slip of paper from her dress pocket.
"What's this?" he asked.
"A letter you wrote me. The day before I died. You never mailed it."
He took it with trembling hands. The handwriting was his.
"My dearest Lena,
I can still hear your laugh in the quiet moments. The house sighs differently without you. I miss you in ways I can't speak aloud. But I believe I'll see you again. That belief keeps me waking each day…"
He stopped reading. Tears blurred the page.
"You did see me again," she said, kissing his temple. He smiled.
They walked hand in hand past orchards of apricots and cherries. Each path seemed endless, but nothing felt far.
The deeper they walked, the more memories surfaced—not just his own, but the shared ones: students he'd taught, people he'd comforted, even small acts he'd forgotten.
A girl appeared beneath a willow tree—no more than six years old. She beamed at Eli.
"Mr. Harrow!"
He blinked. "Alicia?"
She nodded, hugging his leg. "You helped me learn to read when the other teachers gave up."
Lena whispered, "People remember kindness, Eli. Even here."
They sat with Alicia, and then others joined___former students, old friends. The Orchard, it seemed, was not just for solitude. It was also for a reunion.