Peaches

looking for something she could comment on to make her aunt feel like she’d read it. She’d finally marked a section about finding an outlet for your emotions, like a musical instrument. Just look at the angels and their harps, it said. She’d managed to convince much of her extended family that she did, in fact, find solace in her cello.
    Right now, it was leaned on the wall beside her closet, a thin layer of dust asleep on its surface.
    She stood up, the pups leaping off the window seat and following at her heels. She looked at the cello, then looked in the mirror on her closet door. How had she gotten so fat? Oh yeah. She opened her closet and pulled a box of solace off the top shelf.
    She gave Honey Babe and Majestic, each named after a breed of peach, a caramel-drenched Girl Scout Samoa, then polished off the rest of the box herself.

    “What’re you doing lazing around in here all day?”
    Birdie was lying in her bed in a cookiefied stupor watching VH1. There was a fascinating show about eighties Hair Bands.
    “Nothing,” Birdie said, sitting up and wincing at Poopie in a pathetic attempt at a smile. Poopie had started working at the house as a cleaning woman some fifteen years ago when she’d come from Mexico to pack peaches, shortly after Birdie was born, but now she mostly cooked and had Birdie clean instead. If Birdie’s mom was the neglectful gardener in Birdie’s life, Poopie was the kudzu. She was hearty and she had staying power.
    “You know we don’t have nearly enough help and you’re in here feeling sorry for yourself,” Poopie said, thrusting out a bucket. “Get down there to the cider house and start cleaning up the press. You’ll feel better.”
    Birdie slid off the bed and took the bucket obediently from Poopie’s hands. Poopie smacked her on the butt on the way out. Birdie had more cushioning there than she used to.

    On the porch, Birdie bumped into Horatio Balmeade, who took off his hat and smiled with straight white teeth.
    “Hi, Birdie.”
    “Hi, Mr. Balmeade.”
    Horatio Balmeade was the Darlingtons’ only neighbor. He owned the country club next door, and he was always looking to expand. Birdie knew a visit from him inevitably meant an offer on the orchard. He’d made offers every year for the past five years, though her dad always made it clear he’d rather throw himself under the wheels of Horatio’s Mercedes than sell his family’s orchard to a golf course developer.
    He was like a mosquito that hovered just out of reach as you tried to smack at him, only to sail back the moment you had forgotten him. He wasn’t big enough to do much harm, but he was big enough to itch. He was probably the only person Birdie had ever met that she actually hated. She glanced around the porch, feeling self-conscious about the peeling paint and the wood rot on the banister, the dirtiness of the rag rug at the top of the stairs.
    “Can I help you?”
    “Oh, just calling on your dad,” Horatio said through his teeth.
    Birdie knew Walter’s patented responses to Mr. Balmeade—he wasn’t home, he was busy. “He’s over checking the—”
    “Hi there, Horace.” Walter stepped onto the porch behind Birdie. He thrust out his hand and shook Mr. Balmeade’s, a joyless smile on his face. “I’ve been meaning to get over there for that game of golf.”
    Birdie looked at her dad, then at Mr. Balmeade. Horace? “C’mon inside, Poopie’s just made a fresh batch of sweet tea.”
    Mr. Balmeade turned back to Birdie. “Thanks, honey.”
    Birdie watched them, boggled, as both men disappeared into the darkness of the house. She stared at the closed door for a minute. And then she walked down the porch stairs.
    Birdie lit out across the clearing and over the hill toward the cider house, trying to shake Horatio Balmeade out of her head, the bucket knocking against the side of her ample right thigh, her auburn hair bouncing in its ponytail. Maybe her dad was desperate for friends since her mom had left. The thought that he might actually sell the orchard was too ridiculous for Birdie to even consider.
    After a few minutes the movement and the air lifted her mood. She loved the smell of spring. She could predict how and when everything would start blooming. The magnolia by the cider house always unrolled its prehistoric petals later than the ones on top of the hill. Piles and piles of blackberry bushes would flower at the far back of the property near the bridge and ripen around the