Peaches

but Rex was never intimidated by her ice-queen routine. He slid back down on his back.
    “C’mon. Lie down with me awhile. It doesn’t matter. What were you going to do with your summer anyway?”
    “I don’t know. Go to France. Get pedicures.” This was the problem: Leeda didn’t have things she loved doing. Rex loved working with his hands; Danay loved school. Her cousin Birdie loved small dogs and peaches.
    “See? Maybe it’s a good thing.”
    Leeda relented and lay down. Rex always made her feel better and worse about things. Usually because he told her the truth. She let him pull the covers around her and wrap his muscular arms around her shoulders.
    “So will you keep working there?”
    “Sure. Whatever.”
    “Thanks, Rex.”
    She lay beside him for another hour or more until she was in that dreamy trance state where cartoon-like scenes played themselves out in her mind—Danay riding the Fur Bus, Rex sitting with her on Tybee Beach, and the endless motion of Murphy and Birdie thinning the peach trees, plucking the buds and dropping them on the ground.

    Birdie laid down her fork and took a sip of sweet tea, smiling at her mom. Cynthia looked fabulous, dressed in a bright red summer set, her hair freshly trimmed in a freshly tinted bob. On the orchard she’d always looked unkempt.
    Cynthia made the sign toward the waiter for the check.
    Liddie’s Tea Room was one of the most old-school and most popular restaurants in Bridgewater, with tiny round tables that were always full of loud women who sat practically on top of each other. Cynthia had to lean toward Birdie to be heard.
    “Don’t worry about it, honey. That orchard’s been dying for years. It’ll be nice for it to have a fresh start. Have you lost weight?” Cynthia fiddled with her red beaded necklace.
    Birdie took a bite of the salad plate her mom had ordered for her before she’d arrived and tried to talk herself out of the stomachache that was gathering below her ribs. Hearing her mom talk so casually about the orchard made her feel like it was already lost. And it also made her feel melodramatic for feeling that the whole thing was ripping her in half. Her mom made it sound so ordinary.
    “I’ve heard Mr. Balmeade is going to have the man who did Howl Mill do the condos. They’re beautiful. Who knows, in acouple of years maybe we could move into one on the very same spot as the house!”
    Howl Mill was the gated community Cynthia had just announced she was moving into, which had obviously started the lunch off on a low point for Birdie. When she’d told Birdie she was coming into town and asked her to pedal out to Liddie’s to meet for lunch, Birdie had thought maybe she was reconsidering the divorce. Now it seemed it was just becoming more concrete. Cynthia couldn’t stop talking about it.
    “No grass to take care of. No anything. The management does it all.”
    “That’s great, Mom.” Birdie took another sip of sweet tea, biting lightly on the straw. She was trying to imagine this was the same woman who’d trucked in the mud getting the tractors—which were older, more run-down, and more ornery every year—ready for spraying. When she was a kid, they’d had a huge picnic and a tug-of-war, and Cynthia and Birdie had been on the same side and the last to let go on their team. And then Cynthia had given up, plopping into the mud, and it had just been Birdie, who was no match for the other side. They’d dragged her clear across the middle line.
    “And you can move in as soon as I do. It’ll be perfect. I’m planning on August fifteenth, which gives you a couple of weeks to get situated before school.”
    “But, uh…”
    “You’ll love your room. It’s lofty. And there’s a place for the piano and your cello—like a conservatory, ” Cynthia drawled.
    “I think that’s when Danay’s getting married, Mom.” It was the only protest she felt like she could voice.
    “We’ll send a nice gift.”
    Birdie sighed quietly. She had no desire to move out of her house. She couldn’t even imagine what her dad would do without her. She just didn’t know how to tell her mom that.
    “I’ll bet the place is a mess, isn’t it? I know you’ve got Poopie, but one woman isn’t enough to take care of that man….”
    Birdie listened and nodded as her mom went on and on about Walter, then about how she loved having her own place, how she’d gotten into yoga, and how if Birdie could avoid it, she should never get