Peaches with Bonus Material Read online

  “Sorry,” Gavin said, then turned and sprinted. Murphy watched him hop into his car, the engine of the Honda roaring to life. Without lights, he peeled out, sending gravel flying up behind him. In another second the sound of the engine faded into the distance.

  “’Ooser,” she slurred into the bit of metal that was up against her mouth, trying to roll over. But her foot was still stuck in the root, and it just made another arrow of pain shoot up her leg. “Shtupid shree.” She let her body relax into the tracks again, only stirring when she felt something wet on her cheek. Two something wets.

  “Uck,” Murphy mumbled, trying to wave her arms to swat away the tiny dogs. She managed to flip onto her back and sit up just in time to see the two big bare feet of Walter Darlington as they arrived next to her own.

  Walter, gray at the temples and big boned, held his rifle over his shoulder like a fishing pole, looking both extremely pissed off and extremely satisfied, and took in the shattered glass surrounding Murphy’s butt, the cuts on her hands, the last of the crème de menthe seeping into the rocks. Behind him, just arriving and panting from the run, was the Darlingtons’ fleshy, puppy-like teenage daughter. She swooped down beside Murphy immediately and snatched up the dogs, one in each arm, her big brown eyes wide and staring.

  “Your tree tripped me,” Murphy murmured, ready to make the case that she could sue. It was the tree that was at fault, not her.

  Walter glared, shaking his head. “Sweetie, you picked the wrong day,” he wheezed, his shoulders heaving as if he’d run a hundred miles instead of a couple hundred yards. “You couldn’t have picked a worse one if you tried.”

  On June 11, 1988, Jodee McGowen and her boyfriend snuck onto the Darlington Peach Orchard to pick peaches, and got distracted in the pecan grove. A boy named Miller Abbott had carved a jagged heart into a nearby tree with Jodee’s name inside, but Jodee had no idea. Three weeks later she found out she was carrying her first and only child.

  Date: April 10

  Subject: Murphy McGowen/Trespassing/Theft

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Walter,

  I’ve reviewed Miss McGowen’s record and feel that if both parties are willing, the punishment I’ve suggested is more than fair. Why don’t you call her mother first and see if she’ll agree to give her up to you for the spring break? Make it clear to her that she’ll be working long hours on the trees, that it would be for the entire two weeks, and that of course there would be no pay—I don’t want any misunderstandings here.

  I’d give her community service either way, so it would be in her best interest to do it through the back door, without the courts and another spot on her record. I’ll impress that upon Miss McGowen if you need me to. Let me know if you need me to talk to Jodee as well—I’d be happy to.

  I don’t foresee any problems, but let me know if you need me to intervene at any point. The girl is a firecracker.

  Golf Sunday?

  MA

  Judge Miller Abbott

  Kings County District Court

  Chapter Two

  Leeda Cawley-Smith stuck a spoon into the hole of her lobster claw pastry and dug out a giant dollop of amaretto crème. She stuck the spoon in her mouth and sucked on it, watching to see if her mom would say something. Nothing. Leeda dug two fingers in this time, sticking them between her lips and letting them linger there like the mandibles of an insect—a praying mantis. Her mom didn’t flinch. Leeda sighed, removed her fingers from her lips, and dipped them into the lilac finger bowl by her plate, swirling them around irritably.

  Every time Leeda’s sister, Danay, came home for the weekend, which was just about every other weekend, their mom spent most of her time gazing at her in awe, like the eldest Cawley-Smith daughter was the second coming of Jesus. Only instead of having risen from the tomb, Danay had driven from Atlanta in the Mercedes their parents had bought her for her high school graduation gift. And instead of bringing absolution for all of the Cawley-Smiths’ sins, she brought black-and-white cookies from Henri’s bakery in Buckhead and her fiancé, Brighton, whose family had a fabulous rock-lined pool that nobody swam in and threw parties where nobody smiled.

  Right now, Leeda’s mom and the messiah were talking about wedding invitations.

  “What color and black did you say they were, pumpkin?” Mrs. Cawley-Smith cooed. In reply Danay flashed her brilliant Emory University smile, the one she’d been giving her parents ever since she’d left Bridgewater. Despite the Cawley-Smiths’ money, their huge antebellum mansion, and the three hotels the family owned—posh by Bridgewater standards—they were still small-time in the eyes of the rest of the world, a notion Danay apparently bought into wholeheartedly. She looked at their mom like she thought she was cute. Cute in all of her unsophisticated glory.

  “Lehr & Black, Mom. It’s not a color, it’s a brand.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Cawley-Smith nodded. “Well, you sure are on top of things, sweetie. And with classes and all to keep you occupied, I don’t know how you do it.”

  Danay smiled graciously. “It’s not that bad.”

  Leeda watched both women dig delicately into their matching endive-and-Stilton salads. Danay leaned her elbows on the table, lounging over her food like she might be at a picnic on the beach instead of in a stuffy dining room. Occasionally she reached over and placed her hand on their mother’s wrist, patting it affectionately as she talked.

  “I couldn’t believe it when I saw the lights in the rearview,” she said, referring to a story she’d started earlier about how she’d been pulled over last week for going eighty-five in a fifty-five. “Two hundred fifty dollars, can you believe it? He wouldn’t even knock it down to eighty.”

  Leeda watched the faces surrounding the table. Everyone, including her parents, shook their heads softly, agreeing with her, wearing amused expressions. It was this—Danay’s demeanor while telling the story, that lazy perfection—that always managed to take Leeda by surprise. Somehow Leeda always forgot it, and when she witnessed it all over again, it sank into her stomach like a lead weight. Danay could screw up (not that she did very often) and absorb it into her perfection, like it was another jewel on her sparkling aura.

  Leeda took another bite of her pastry. She’d managed to charm the waiter into bringing her the lobster claw instead of the prix fixe appetizer, pulling out her best eyelash-fluttering southern debutante look. She occasionally glanced at her mother to see if she’d say anything. She didn’t.

  Instead the entire Cawley-Smith family sitting at the table moved on to the wedding that would take place in mid-August, talking about the cake (red velvet, boring), the honeymoon (the West Indies, typical), the signature drinks (the Danayrita and the You Brighton My Life Banana Daquiri, no comment), and the wedding song (“From This Moment On,” by Shania Twain, vomit). Chewing loudly, Leeda let her attention drift across the table to Brighton, who smiled at her with his usual kiss-up-to-the-family expression. She frowned back, letting her pink puffy lips droop in disdain, then looked at the space just beyond his head. A giant acrylic painting of a miniature Shetland pony watched them eat, its big brown eyes frank and pleading. Beneath it a white banner read: Mitzie Needs Your Help.

  As usual, Leeda’s grandmom’s annual Shetland Rescue dinner was a rousing success. The Primrose Cottage Inn, a sprawling Cawley-Smith–owned B & B with enormous white porches and rooms decorated in the style of different states, was packed, despite the hefty price tag of $250 a head. Leeda surveyed the crowd, looking for one cute guy or at least one guy below fifty. One man across the room, Horatio Balmeade of the Balmeade Country Club, locked eyes with her and gave her the old triangle stare: left eye, right eye, chest. Leeda curled over herself protectively.

  “Don’t slouch, Leeda. It’s unattractive.” Her dad had temporarily looked up from his papers, which he took any opportunity to shuffle through. Leeda suspected he did it even when he didn’t have to in order to shield himself from the
women he was always surrounded by. She straightened up and sighed loudly, hooking a finger into one of her blond starlet curls.

  “And honey,” her mom added stiffly, “smile.”

  Leeda smiled huge and fakely and rolled her eyes almost undetectably. It was one of her mother’s pet theories that if you smiled, even when you were pissed off or depressed, it made you actually feel happy—which Leeda thought was a load of crap. But she acted like she believed it. With her mother, Leeda acted a lot.

  Ever since she’d been little, Leeda had sensed the way her mother’s eyes lit up when Danay entered the room and how when Leeda entered, they glazed over. Leeda had pushed herself into the top of her class while Danay had landed there with ease. Leeda’d tried to develop the same style of jokes, the same fine-line walk between casual and flawless. She had never been able to wear it as well. And maybe that was why her mom never filled her end of the bargain Leeda had secretly struck between them. Lucretia never lit her eyes up any brighter for her youngest daughter. After telling Leeda to smile, Lucretia let her eyes drift to Danay like metal to a magnet.

  Leeda scanned the room, noticing that the waiter who’d brought the lobster claw was glancing at her every so often. Leeda was generally loved by waiters. In fact, she was pretty sure she was loved by just about everyone except her mom. At school, people courted her friendship like they were paying homage to a queen. When she went out, people’s eyes lingered on her. Last summer, when the Cawley-Smiths had visited Tokyo, she’d been so loved by all the guys at the clubs, they kept asking if she was Charlize Theron.

  Leeda was like David Hasselhoff. She was loved in Japan.

  “Hey,” Danay said, tapping Leeda’s toe under the table and meeting her with a sparkling, perfect gaze of sisterly love. “What’re you doing for spring break?”

  “Camping at Tybee Beach. With Rex.”

  Danay looked at their mom. “Y’all are letting her go camping with a guy? You wouldn’t even let me go with my girlfriends!”

  Lucretia fiddled with the rings on three of her fingers, then scanned the wall for the clock. Leeda’s parents liked to forget that Rex existed since he lived in a crappy brick duplex on the edge of Pearly Gates Cemetery across town, among other things.

  He’d been Leeda’s boyfriend since October. He was the hottest guy in Bridgewater, without a doubt. And he adored her. When he’d asked her out, her knee-jerk reaction had been to say no. Her second knee-jerk reaction had been to say yes because it had suddenly occurred to her that dating someone like Rex might make her mom sit up and take notice for once. Only Rex had turned out to be an okay guy. A great escape. And maybe the one place in her life where she felt maybe she was showing her parents who she truly was after all. She wished he had come; she always felt more solid with her family when he was around.

  “Actually, Leeda, your father and I were talking….”

  Leeda felt her stomach clench instinctively.

  “We think it’d be nice for you to stay with your uncle Walter for the break, help him out with the orchard a little, and spend some time with Birdie.”

  “Birdie?” Leeda never saw her second cousin Birdie except at weddings and funerals on the Smith side of the Cawley-Smith family, which her mom mostly wanted to forget.

  “Sweetie, you know they’re having a tough time with Cynthia gone,” Leeda’s mom whispered, almost gleefully. She loved being the bearer of personal info, even when it involved her own cousin running out on Birdie and Uncle Walter.

  “But I already promised Rex….” Leeda frowned, her perfectly arched blond eyebrows descending rapidly. Though she hated camping, she’d imagined she’d end up begging Rex to stay in some resort overlooking the ocean, somewhere where she could wash the sand out from between her toes. Where she could shop in the lobby and lounge at the waterfall pool bar, a safe distance from the creepy things that lurked under the ocean’s surface—hermit crabs, blowfish, seaweed. Rex liked to catch things like that and stick them on her legs. “You guys can’t.”

  “Walter was saying what a nice young lady you are and how he’d like his Birdie to be more like you.”

  Leeda rolled her eyes. “Birdie makes me uncomfortable. C’mon. You can’t.”

  Leeda felt a familiar helpless lump in her throat. This was the way her parents worked. Requests were never requests; they were just orders all dressed up. Naked orders would be too tacky for the Cawley-Smiths.

  “You just don’t want me to spend time with Rex.” Leeda crossed her arms tightly, lilac water from her fingertips dripping down her palms and the pale side of her wrists.

  Mrs. Cawley-Smith sighed, a derisive grin spreading itself on her face. “Really, honey, don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?”

  “You guys are such snobs!” Leeda said, tossing what was left of her lobster claw onto her plate. A few people at the surrounding tables stared. Horatio Balmeade leered.

  Danay stared around, wide-eyed and scandalized, a perfect replica of their mom. “Leeda, you’re being a brat.”

  “I’ll leave, then.” Leeda shot out of her chair and stalked out of the room and into the back garden of the Primrose Cottage Inn. She flopped onto one of the wrought-iron chairs, crossed her legs, and whipped out her cell. She was going to call Rex immediately.

  He’d rev up his dirty pickup and be here in five minutes flat. That was the kind of guy he was. At times like this, she wanted him more than ever.

  People like the Cawley-Smiths, by the way, got buried on this side of town, at Divine Grace of the Redeemer—miles from both Pearly Gates Cemetery and Anthill Acres Trailer Park.

  Chapter Three

  Birdie’s window was wide and broad, with a window seat for sitting in and a view of the garden her mom had planted years ago. Cynthia Darlington had spent tons of money on fancy latticework, gazebos, and exotic breeds of roses—and then left her creation to the kudzu. She had fostered Birdie into the world in much the same way she had fostered the garden. She’d insisted on homeschooling her “because you never know what kind of trash they’re teaching in the Georgia public schools.” She’d insisted on art lessons, French language, and cello, though Birdie wasn’t interested in any of the above.

  The only thing Birdie was ever interested in was home. There was nothing Birdie loved more than to curl up in her window seat and watch the orchard. She knew what animals burrowed where, and what flowers bloomed when, and what trees produced the best fruit. She listened to the farm’s rhythms through the screen like the beat of the heart of someone she loved.

  Cynthia Darlington had installed the fancy latticework in her daughter’s life and then driven away with her dog. Near dawn, Cynthia’d been spotted by the Darlingtons’ neighbor, Horatio Balmeade, driving their 1988 green Jaguar onto the on-ramp to Route 75 north. According to Horatio, Cynthia wore a scarf in her hair and Toonsis, a Burberry collar that had seen better days. According to Horatio, they had both been smiling.

  She’d left a letter on the table. Birdie had it beside her now.

  Walter,

  The dog is coming with me.

  I debated taking him from you, sweetie, but you know Toonsis and I have a special bond. Crazy as it may seem, I took him to a pet psychic in Perry three weeks ago, when you were away selling the camper. As I suspected, he shares my sentiment about your blessed peaches. Toonsis and I are both tired of the smell, we’re tired of the fuzz sticking under our fingernails, and we’re tired of playing second fiddle to fruit.

  Tell Birdie I’ll call her. I’ll be sending for her at the end of the summer, when I’m back from New York. I don’t want to unsettle her quite yet, but of course it’ll have to happen before school starts in the fall.

  Don’t fight me on this, dear. We both know Birdie needs a woman’s guidance at this, her most delicate and impressionable age. High school can be hell.

  Yours,

  Cynthia

  The first thing Walter had done when he’d realized they were gone was to go out and buy Birdie two papillon p
ups, the breed her mother had always said she wanted, as an invisible “screw you” to Cynthia. At least, that was what her mom was saying now.

  Birdie had the cordless up to her ear, pinning herself against the molding of her window as if it was connected to a long curling cord. Conversations with her mom made her feel like that. Trapped.

  “He’s just rubbing them in my face.”

  Birdie had thought of it another way. She’d thought Walter had given her the dogs to cheer her up. But Cynthia was already on to another topic.

  “Hell on earth. That’s what that place is.” Cynthia was talking about the orchard now. “I started hating it the year we moved in.”

  “But you moved in the year I was born, Mom,” Birdie pointed out.

  “That’s right. I remember the dirt in that place, scrubbing those floors; that was before Poopie, you know,” Cynthia said, referring to the Darlingtons’ longtime housekeeper. “And then the peach work was endless. You know we only had fourteen hands that year. I thought my fingers were going to fall off from all the work.”

  “I didn’t know it was so hard for you,” Birdie offered, feeling guilty somehow. As if the fetus of Birdie could have slacked off just a little less.

  “My friend Nancy always said you were my little bad luck charm,” her mom went on. “Of course that’s not true, honey. It’s just the timing was so bad with you and the orchard, and I really stopped loving your father that year. Fell completely out of love. Poof.”

  “Wow.” That was all Birdie could think to say. Her ear had started to itch. Really bad. “Mom, I gotta go.”

  Cynthia got quiet on the other end. “I’m sorry, honey. I know it’s not fair for me to tell you these things. I just…ugh. Your dad is such a jerk.”

  “That’s okay, Mom. Poopie’s calling me.”