Peaches

the awkward silence stretch out.
    “Birdie?”
    “Yeah.” Birdie swallowed the lump in her throat.
    “I miss you. I miss the orchard.”
    It was such a relief to hear Leeda say it. Birdie smiled into the phone. “I miss you too. Life is so boring here right now.”
    “Yeah. I wish you were coming to the wedding. It would be a lifesaver.”
    Birdie’s mom had gone through with plans to move into her condo on the same day as Danay’s wedding, and Birdie hadn’t been able to wiggle out of it. She hadn’t even had the heart to try. Birdie swallowed. “I wish that too.”
    Another long silence.
    “Have, um, have you talked to Murphy?” Birdie asked.
    “I don’t want to talk about her.”
    “Okay.” Birdie’s voice came out guilty. She still felt somehow responsible. Like if she hadn’t looked out her window, Murphy and Rex wouldn’t have kissed. She had read somewhere, in one of the books her aunt was always giving her, that cells behaved a certain way when they were being observed, a way that was different than they would behave normally. Maybe Birdie was responsible for all the ills of the world just by somehow being around to hear about them and watch them on TV.
    “Anyway, Danay was so damn grateful she invited Rex to the wedding. Last minute.”
    Birdie figured she wasn’t supposed to ask about that either.
    “That’s great, Leeda.”
    “Well, listen, I’ll call you after.”
    “Okay.”
    “Okay.”
    The receiver went dead. And Birdie lay back down on the kitchen floor.

    In the family’s penthouse suite at the hotel, Leeda tugged at the straps of her dress and stepped out onto the balcony. The temperature had reached ninety-nine degrees in the limo on the way from the church and Leeda felt every degree of it making her bridesmaid dress, which was strapless, salmon, and not half bad, stick to every centimeter of her.
    “Hey, Lee. They want you downstairs.”
    Leeda turned to see Rex standing in the wide living roomwith his hands in his pockets, looking at her seriously under his dark eyebrows. Rex had given her this look many times since the last day in the orchard. Every time he saw her, he acted like a lead weight. And Leeda always reacted in the same way.
    “Okay, sweetie.” Leeda swiped at the sweat under her armpits and turned a full-watt smile on him, linking her fingers through his.
    In the elevator they fell silent. Leeda played with her fingernails so the silence wouldn’t feel like the kind that was asking to be interrupted. But Rex interrupted anyway.
    “Lee…”
    Leeda looked up at him. “Please, Rex. Not today.”
    Rex’s shoulders fell, but he obliged her. When the elevator doors opened, Leeda felt like she’d made a narrow escape.
    The room was packed with over five hundred guests. Leeda grinned and touched a few on the elbows or shoulders and smiled at them as she made her way through. In the center of the dance floor Danay and Brighton and the wedding party were dancing to the wedding song. Oh crap. Leeda was supposed to be dancing with her in-law Glen. She scoped around the room for him, but he was hitting on one of the waiters. Thank God.
    Unfortunately, her eyes then immediately found her mom, who made a beeline for her.
    “Leeda, we were looking all over for you.”
    “Yeah, I couldn’t find Glen, though,” Leeda fibbed, scanning the opposite side of the room as if she were looking for him.
    “Honey, this is your sister’s day. Remember that.”
    “How could I forget?”
    Leeda watched her mom walk to join her dad, king andqueen of the party. Leeda wasn’t interested in taking anything away from Danay at the moment. She just wanted to make it through the day in one piece and do what she needed to do. And that was going to take some effort. She felt like her whole being was being held together by Jell-O.
    Through a loose gaggle of people Leeda made out a familiar face. Horatio Balmeade was staring at the breasts of her cousin Margarita. Rex had drifted away to the side of the dance floor, where he stood darkly, nursing a glass of champagne, which she knew he hated.
    Leeda wanted to go stand beside him. It would make her feel safer, like it always did. But she held herself back, because in a way it was less safe too, now. There was too much danger in talking with Rex—they hadn’t talked about Murphy and she didn’t want to. She circulated among the guests instead, smiling at everyone the way she was supposed to, making small talk, being the perfect