Peaches

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
    L eeda 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 poolthat 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,