Free Love and Peaches by Jodi Lynn Anderson

feeling desperate, like something huge and important was slipping out of her fingers.
    â€œMom, that’s a paternity test, isn’t it?”
    Murphy’s head was spinning. She felt too small for the throbbing in her gut.
    â€œMom…?”
    Jodee slammed the door of the Pontiac and started the engine. Murphy yelled after her even though the windows were up, the engine was blasting, and there was no way she could hear. “Mom, does this mean you found my dad?!”
    The tires peeled in the driveway, and Jodee was gone.
    Â 
    Judge Miller Abbott had not been an adventurous teenager. He always stayed after school to help clean the erasers. He was a member of the Bridgewater High School Debate Team, the Dooly County Dapper Dans, and the Young Republicans. He met his wife at a cotillion. For weeks after his wedding, he woke feeling like he was forgetting something, like maybe he’d forgotten to pay the caterer or had a library book that he hadn’t returned. For some reason this feeling was always accompanied by a desire to drive to the orchard and howl at the moon.

Eleven
    B irdie and Leeda sat at the decrepit picnic table behind the women’s dorm, kicking each other’s feet under the table and picking at the peeling wood. Murphy stood over the outdoor sink, running her hair and the back of her neck under the faucet. Majestic pounced around the yard a few feet away, chasing a bee.
    Leeda was on her BlackBerry, looking like she was about to spontaneously combust. Birdie was thinking about the lostness that had snagged inside her. There was no other way to describe it. She had felt it since the day she had come home and gotten the news about the farm from her dad and Poopie. Maybe she had even felt it before that. Maybe it had been the lostness that had caused Birdie to send the letter about Enrico’s pants.
    â€œWhat? No, I need to leave the return flight open-ended.” Leeda tapped Birdie’s feet with her own. She pulled the phone away from her ear to stare down at the screen, and then put it back to her cheek and mouthed to Birdie, The reception sucks.
    It was midday and they’d been working hard all morning, snapping the linens onto the beds in the dorms, mopping the floors and scrubbing the cobwebs out of the sinks, draggingthe harvesting harnesses out to where they’d be ready to use first thing tomorrow. The workers would be arriving anytime this afternoon. What Birdie hadn’t counted on was being ready for them and having nothing more to do but wait.
    Cynthia Darlington had brought lunch from the teahouse—finger sandwiches, iced mint tea, macaroni salad—stayed for half an hour, and rushed back to work. They had chatted about the teahouse, about people in town, and about Walter’s and Poopie’s plans to move.
    Birdie could tell she’d wanted to ask about Enrico too, but didn’t force the issue out of respect for Birdie’s privacy.
    She kept thinking about what her dad had said when he and Poopie told her about the orchard. That she had her own life now. It had sounded like he and Poopie felt they’d been set free. If they did feel that way, Birdie knew they deserved it. But it made Birdie’s heart ache. Because she didn’t feel she had her own life at all.
    â€œOkay, June tenth, that’s fine.” Leeda rolled her eyes at Birdie. “Uh huh. Yes.”
    The days leading up to the harvest had always been agonizing for Birdie. As a kid, it had meant waiting for Luis to give her piggyback rides so she was towering over the peach trees, or for Emma to sit gently beside her to show her needlepoint, or for Raeka to prop her up on the counter to watch while she boiled a bag full of black beans and got them ready to sauté. Because she was homeschooled, Birdie had always treasured the orchard filled with familiar friends. Waiting for summer was a lot like waiting for Santa Claus to come. Then, as she’d gotten older,