Peaches

foliage consisted of the kudzu that lined the telephone poles and the moss that stuck up through the cracks in the concrete patios.
    Just emerging from one of the rows—on a path to intersect Birdie if she’d been walking instead of run-hobbling—was a figure. Murphy watched it closely, making out a man, well, a guy, in an orange T-shirt and jeans. He was nice to look at, definitely, though he had very little style—his jeans weren’t any kind of hipster blue and his T-shirt looked like Hanes standard variety. Murphy was into style.
    Still, she could tell just by the way he walked that he had to be good looking. Guys who knew it had a certain walk that didn’t show off—their looks could do it for them.
    Murphy made a mental note of him. And then she slunk back down the hall and forgot about him altogether.

    Up on the porch, several people—mostly young Mexican men—were milling around speaking Spanish—sitting on the porch rockers and standing on the stairs, their skin brown and warm looking. Leeda parked her Beemer as close to the house as possible and primly made her way through the crowd. “Pardone, pardone.” She wasn’t sure if that was right, though she’d taken two years of Spanish so far. Of course, she’d spent most of that time snapping the split ends out of her hair and being courted via note by ninety percent of the boys in the class and half the girls.
    Inside, the house smelled like mothballs and boxwood—the signature scent of Uncle Walter’s. Uncle Walter himself carried the smell with him wherever he went, much like Leeda’s mom carried the smell of Givenchy Very Irresistible, claiming that every woman should have a scent others could remember her by.
    Leeda let out a long, nervous sigh. She hadn’t been to the house in over a year. Looking around now, she could see the signs of Aunt Cynthia’s sudden disappearance. Bare spaces where pieces of furniture had been. The dining room table covered in papers, the chairs pulled out and in disarray. Cynthia had always been in Walter’s office, on the phone with some client, solving some issue for the workers, or handling the bills. It felt quiet without her high southern voice lilting through therooms. Leeda wished she had Rex with her. Or one of her friends from school.
    Poopie came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “Hiya, honey,” she drawled in her weird mixture of Spanish and southern accents.
    “Hi, Miss Poopie.” Leeda kissed her on her warm, dewy cheek. Poopie didn’t smell like mothballs. She always smelled like warm cookies.
    “You look more and more like a movie star every day. How many boyfriends you have?”
    Leeda smiled. “Just one for now.”
    Poopie shook her head. “A waste. I hope he’s sweet to you.”
    “He is.”
    Poopie smiled too, showing three gold teeth. “Well, it’s good to have you, sweetie. We need every hand we can get this year. I’m about to drive the van into town to take the workers shopping. This young man is helping me get everything organized.” She nodded to a cute, dark-skinned guy standing in the archway of the kitchen. He smiled at Leeda. Leeda smiled tightly back, polite. People who didn’t speak her language always gave her the giggly wigglies. “Go on up and see our Birdie. She’s hiding from me.”
    Leeda plodded her way up the droopy, lopsided stairs, miserable. She wondered if her parents would have ever sentenced Danay to two weeks with the Darlingtons. She tried to picture it. Instead the picture leapt into her head of the day Danay had left for Emory (the Harvard of the South, as her mom liked to say)—her mom and dad with their arms genteelly looped behind each other’s backs watching her drive away, tears in their eyes. It made a lump rise to Leeda’s throat.
    In the upstairs hall, the same dresser held the same knickknacks that had been there since Leeda could remember. The same piece of cinnamon candy had been sitting there for at least sixteen years. Leeda wrinkled her nose. She liked things new and shiny, not old and dusty.
    Birdie was sitting in her giant window, flipping through a Cosmo and nibbling the chocolate off a Goo Goo Cluster. Aside from the Goo Goo Cluster, she reminded Leeda of a Renoir she’d seen in Paris last summer—soft and full and pretty. Two papillons lay sleeping on each other’s necks at her feet.
    “Hi, Birdie.”
    Birdie jolted and tucked the magazine behind her, her cheeks turning pink. Leeda scanned the room to