Love and Peaches (18 page)

A year before she died, Eugenie Cawley-Smith was sitting on her porch, reading a box of old letters and crying. When a neighbor stopped to ask her what was wrong, she hit him in the shin with her cane, and she walked inside to put her secrets where they belonged.

M
urphy looked at the address and then up at the house. In all the years she'd known her dad, she'd never known where he lived.

It was a cookie-cutter house. Two floors, green siding, and a small, square yard. It didn't have the slightest hint of personality. At least the trailer had a certain rusty romanticism to it. Murphy sighed, kicked her feet at the pavement a few times, considered leaving, and finally walked up to the door. The screen door was closed, but the door itself was open to the late August air, the sounds of kids playing down the street, or the occasional distant honk of a horn. Murphy peered into the darkness. Somewhere inside, a TV was on. She looked at the doorbell, and then at the black cast metal door handle. On impulse, she pushed the thumb button and opened the door.

She followed the sound to the living room, where her dad was sitting on a beige sofa. He started when he saw her.

“Hey.” Before he could get up, she plopped down on the couch next to him. “What're you watching?”

He took a moment to gather himself, then answered, “
Matlock
reruns.” He sat back, looking at her askance. Murphy just stared at the TV. Finally he turned to the TV too. From her spot on the couch, Murphy could see the empty dining room, a light on in the kitchen, and a pile of papers on the kitchen table that had to be his work. She hadn't ever pictured the judge as lonely. But she had imagined the quiet of his house.

The judge reached for a bag of chips that was sitting on the table beside him and offered them to Murphy. Murphy took a few, and he put the bag between them so she could have more. It was a nice, dependable thing to do.

Halfway through the show, when she was starting to feel sleepy, she laid her head on his shoulder. It felt slightly awkward and slightly pleasant.

“I'm sorry I called you a chump,” she said.

“It's okay,” he replied.

“Even though only a chump watches
Matlock.
”

Her dad laughed. He had a kind of dorky, understated, controlled laugh that reminded Murphy of the fact that he was a judge and that he probably thought he had a reputation to uphold, even around those he loved.

It didn't feel wild or free.

But it felt like real life.

Maybe sometimes, real was enough.

B
irdie was in the garden uprooting a few favorite plants and distributing them into soil-filled pots. Somehow the orchard's emptiness sounded wrong. Maybe it was that August had always been inhabited by the noise of the workers. Maybe things echoed differently because there was no house to echo off of. Maybe it was just the sound of everyone never coming back.

The sound of a truck coming up the drive drew Birdie's attention. She could just glimpse that it was Leeda. Birdie waved as she climbed out and walked down the path toward her.

“What're you doing?” Leeda asked, putting her hands in her pockets and nodding at the plants.

“We're taking them to Florida. I'm gonna go down with Poopie and my dad before I go back to school.” There was a rental house waiting for them there until they could close on a permanent one. It was right by the ocean. Birdie couldn't imagine what waking up to the ocean would feel like.

Leeda stared around the garden. Then her gaze turned to the rows of peach trees across the lawn. “What'll happen to them?”

“They'll get overgrown by other plants, I guess.”

Birdie took off her garden gloves and wiped her hand across her brow. Leeda's eyes, like Birdie's, couldn't stop straying to the place where the house had been. It was like they both had to keep reminding themselves it wasn't there.

“Bird, I need to ask you something.” Leeda sat down on the bench under the nectarine tree. Birdie sat next to her, warily.

“I've decided not to go back to New York.”

“What?”

“My family's gonna flip. Murphy may flip. But it's not right for me.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I'm gonna stay here. I'm gonna go to vet school. Do some online stuff, and then I'll take classes in Atlanta once a week.”

Birdie couldn't hide her surprise and confusion. Finally she smiled, scandalized, amazed. “God, what's everyone going to say?” She knew vets didn't make much money. It certainly wasn't what anyone expected for Leeda. Lee was designed to be high profile. She was supposed to be somewhere people could see her and admire her and look up to her.

Leeda plucked a leaf off the nectarine tree and pulled it apart in strings along the veins. “It doesn't matter.” Leeda turned to her. “Bird, I want to do something, but it has to be okay with you.”

“What?”

“I want to take care of animals. Like a shelter.” Leeda tossed her leaf and folded her hands on the back of the bench, turning to face Birdie. “I know that sounds crazy. Like I'm eleven. Like I want to ride unicorns and have a room painted in rainbows and
take care of all the homeless animals. But it's really what I want. I want to be helpful in a tiny way.”

“I think that's great,” Birdie said. She didn't quite understand it, but she trusted Leeda. And Leeda never jumped into anything without weighing it first. In fact, Birdie wasn't sure she'd ever seen Leeda jump, period.

“Bird, I bought the orchard.”

Birdie gasped. Leeda plunged on.

“Your dad accepted my offer. But…” Leeda got nervous here, plucking another nectarine leaf and tearing it violently. “But I know that it's your place, even if it's not yours anymore. And I don't want to intrude on that. If you don't want me to, if it's too weird or something, I would totally understand—”

Birdie put her hands on Leeda's arm to stop her.

“It's yours,” she said. The words came out at the same moment the thought arrived in her brain. She didn't mean, “I'm giving you permission.” She didn't mean, “Take it.”

Years ago, Poopie Pedraza had stumbled onto the orchard by a twist of fate. Birdie had always thought life would hand it to her next, like that was supposed to be.

But now, saying “It's yours” was only stating a truth.

The orchard had found its way into Leeda's hands while everyone had been looking somewhere else.

 

It was evening before they had everything packed up, way behind schedule. Leeda had gone home to deal with her parents, a look of utter fear on her face.

Dusk had always been, maybe, the best time at the orchard. It filtered out the distraction of sunlight, throwing into relief the
shapes of the dorms, the line of where the air lifted off from the grass, the silhouettes of the peach trees, and the sounds—of a distant dog barking, of the hum of bees.

Birdie walked over to take one last look into the gaping hole where her house had been. She kicked around some of the stones. There was a pile of garbage that had yet to be carted off over by a Dumpster they'd rented. There were old books they'd discarded and boxes Birdie had never even opened. She suddenly felt sad she hadn't explored more. She was out of time.

On impulse, she sifted through the boxes just to get a glimpse. There were old shoes. Some ancient balls of yarn. Two boxes of nails. The only thing that contained anything interesting was a cardboard shoe box. It held a bunch of faded old postcards from Cambodia, Paris, Japan. Birdie skimmed through the pictures like they were little treasures. They promised adventure, beauty, the unknown, the unexpected.

Birdie turned one over and looked at the back. There was no note on any of them. Just the address of the orchard, no person specified, and the postmark. And on the back of each card and drawn in faded blue ink was a tiny heart.

Birdie took one of the postcards to keep. The rest she put back in the box, and she laid it with the rest of the debris.

A few bats already had woken up and were zigzagging this way and that, catching flies. Synchronous fireflies were lighting the shadows between the leaves and the dark spaces nested in blades of grass, hovering right above the ground. Majestic was standing in the truck, paws on the window. The last peaches, the ones that had been missed, were dark spots against the green of the peach leaves—the last color in the spectrum to disappear
from sight, the one that stayed the longest, the color of new things.

It was like the end of an animated movie. Like everything that Birdie loved about her childhood home had come out all at once before she left.

Behind her, the truck roared to life as her dad started the engine. Birdie felt the time leaving her; she was aware of only having seconds.

She smiled. In her mind, she said good-bye. She said thank you to whatever or whomever there was to be thankful to.

She ran for the truck and jumped in.

She moved on.

They pulled away.

R
ex Taggart was packing up his truck in the parking lot of Homewood Suites when Murphy found him.

“You're leaving.”

He turned. “Yeah.”

“Right before I'm leaving.”

“Yeah.”

“That's timing.”

Rex didn't answer.

Murphy leaned up against the truck and looked at him. “Thanks for beating up my dad, by the way.”

“Yeah, usually it's the other way around after you've seen somebody's daughter naked.”

Murphy grinned. “Judge Abbott doesn't seem like the fisticuffs kind. I don't think he'd lay a hand on you. Maybe he'd lay a subpoena on you.”

Rex laughed under his breath.

“Rex?” Murphy looked at him. “Why did you do it?”

Rex thought. “It didn't seem right, him coming in and shaking up your life when you've come this far without him. It
seemed selfish to me. Maybe I was wrong. Your mom kept asking for my advice on everything. I hope you're not too mad at her, Shorts. It was a really hard choice for her. I don't know. Maybe I should have stayed out of it.”

Murphy studied her fingers. Rex knew her as well as she knew herself sometimes. But maybe that gave him the same blind spots too. She watched him load the last of his stuff into the truck and shut the door. He turned to her.

“It's good-bye again, huh?” she said, smiling even though it hurt.

“Yeah.”

“Rex…” She picked at a piece of paint that was chipping off the old truck, and then met his eyes again. “Thanks.”

“Yeah. No problem.”

He shifted as if he were getting ready to go. Murphy plunged ahead.

“And I wanted to say, I…I didn't stop. I didn't stop loving you…in that way. That's not why I didn't write. It's the opposite. I mean, I couldn't write because I didn't stop.” She was making no sense, but Rex seemed to be calmly getting it.

“I know, Murphy.”

“But listen.” She bit her lip. “Can we be friends? I want us to be friends. I want us to have each other. Can we, you know, have something long and boring and reliable? Like, maybe I can call you sometimes, when I'm pissed off or when I have something funny to say. Or there's something maybe only you would get?”

He jangled his keys in his pockets and smiled his sideways grin at her. “Murphy, I'm here.”

He looked at her as if waiting for something. But finally he
gave his keys another jangle, opened the door, and got in his truck.

Murphy backed up, waving to him from her pockets, her thumbs tucked in and four fingers out and waggling.

He nodded at her. Then he turned his attention to the road. As he pulled away, he put a hand out.

Murphy watched him chug down the road, feeling the loss of him.

It hurt enough that she wanted to write him a letter.

Maybe she would.

F
or the first few days of September, Leeda felt like Noah gathering the animals two by two. There was so much building to be done. And she felt like she was pulling each animal out of some kind of flood.

There was a freshly built corral. She'd hired someone to do it. There were the dorms. She was having insulation put into them for winter use, and the men's dorm was being divided into pens. The women's dorm would follow as soon as Leeda could have another place built to live in. But that, like everything else, would take time. Yesterday an article about her had appeared in the local paper. Leeda had been in the local paper many times over the years. But this was the first article that hadn't mentioned traits like “bright,” “attractive,” “popular,” or “straight-A.” It had focused on the things she was doing, not on the things she just was. The title, which Murphy had laughed at snarkily over the phone, was
LOCAL GIRL MAKES HOOF
.

“
Hoof
instead of
good
?” Murphy had asked. “God, typical Bridgewater.”

Birdie, who had decided to major in journalism so she could
write about all the things that captured her fancy, found three typos in the online article.

It was a long while before Leeda could find the time to sit down and write a letter. When she finally did, it took her a long time to figure out just what she needed to say.

Leeda put the letter in an envelope, addressed it, and sighed.

With Murphy and Birdie gone, Bridgewater seemed a little empty. Leeda had no one to laugh with or to get into trouble with or to go swimming with. Still, she knew she would find people to rely on almost as much as she'd relied on her best friends. It would take time too.

In October, she collected pecans. She watched the fall sunsets from the stairs and called Poopie to ask all sorts of nature questions. By then, her mom had begun to come over for dinner every Wednesday night. Leeda had broken up with Eric the week she had bought the orchard. On Fridays she usually had a date with a guy from vet school.

And then one evening she was sitting on a bench outside the dorm with a week-old kitten and a bottle when a car pulled up the drive.

Leeda had to squint to recognize him at first. He had grown a shaggy beard, and he was wearing a sweater with a hole in it. He looked the picture of everything she would have thought was the opposite of what she'd ever wanted. But her heart jumped into her throat. He walked up to the porch and she stood stiffly. He gave her an awkward hug.

“How was Alaska?” she asked.

“Good. Melting, I guess. How are you?”

“Good.” She offered him a spot beside her on the bench, and they sat. She placed the kitten into a box lined with a towel and a heating pad. “I bought this place,” she said.

“I know. I read about it online.”

Leeda bit her bottom lip, feeling awkward, wondering what to say.

“Are you hiring?” he asked, frowning at her, nervous and true.

Leeda looked at his hand. She debated with herself, and then she reached out and took it.

He squeezed her fingers tightly, and he let out a breath she hadn't noticed he'd been holding. She laid her head on his shoulder, and he kissed the top of her head.

She pulled away. She brought his hand to her face and rubbed it against her cheek.

Some things are easier than you ever thought. That's what it felt like for Leeda to fall in love, for real, for the first time. It felt like it had never been hard at all.