Bobby Smithapple's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Bobby Smithapple spread the lease on the sticky bar and still couldn't read it. His father, Robert Smith, had signed the bottom. Bobby knew that signature by heart. But his father never lived in this town, never set foot in these rotting orchards, and the paper named some address he couldn't make out through the legal words. If he guessed wrong, he'd chase an empty building and burn his last lead. The investigation had already cost him his job and everyone who used to call. He had nothing left but this page. He'd come to the only place still open past dark. A bar built around a sick green glow, the counter lit like a poisoned drink. Behind it stood the owner, a green apple the size of a man, arms crossed, grinning without warmth. Bobby had heard the name whispered by the few people who still spoke to him. Granny Smith. The one who scared customers on purpose, who kept something behind her bar no one touched. "Water," Bobby said. He had no money for anything else. Granny Smith went still. She poured the water slow and set it down without a word. Her eyes moved to his face, then to the paper under his hands. Bobby slid the lease across the wood. "I can't read this part. The address. I need to know which building." "Not a reading room," Granny said. She didn't move the paper back. A woman at the end of the bar turned. Dark glasses, short hair, a reporter's watchfulness. She'd been nursing one drink for an hour. "That's a sublet clause," she said. "The signing party isn't the tenant. He's just the name on file." Bobby stared. "You can read it?" "Candy Brownapple." She came closer and tapped the dense line. "This isn't the address of the building. It's the address where the real owner gets the rent. Chase the building, you find nothing. Chase this, you find who used your father's name." Bobby's chest tightened. He'd nearly run at the wrong door. "Read it out. Please." Candy read the address aloud, plain and slow. A lane deep in the twisted orchards, past the rotten trees. Bobby wrote it on his palm. Granny Smith watched them both. When Candy finished, the big apple spoke quiet. "That lane." She stopped. "Nothing grows clean out there." "You know it?" Bobby asked. "Know enough to stay out." Granny took his empty glass. Her grin was gone now. "You still going?" "I have to know why his name is there." Granny didn't argue. She just refilled the water and left it, like a man might leave a light on. Bobby folded the lease and stood. The words were finally clear. He had a real place now, a direction instead of a guess. But the address Candy read led straight into the orchards everyone warned him away from. The ones that went rotten. He pulled his coat shut and walked toward them.