The Secrets of Peaches by Jodi Lynn Anderson

box, half packed full of letters and knickknacks. Birdie gazed at the items curiously, feeling like a voyeur. Poopie sat with her back turned, looking out the window, the phone cradled in one hand, the other hand resting on a little figure on her windowsill. It took Birdie a moment to recognize it as Saint Anthony. Poopie had him turned toward her as if he were being included in a conference call.
    â€œâ€¦seventeen years…” she was saying. Birdie stood next to the doorjamb, catching bits and pieces of Poopie’s Spanish. She sounded serious, and Birdie hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. She backed up, but just as she did, she heard the phone being laidin the cradle. So she came back, floating in the doorway for a moment.
    â€œYou okay, Poopie?”
    Poopie jumped, then smiled at her over her shoulder. “Yes.” She looked at the Saint Anthony in recognition, then looked embarrassed. “Oh, oh, sorry. I was just borrowing him.” She handed him to Birdie.
    â€œThanks,” Birdie said, confused. She was halfway down the hall when she remembered what she’d wanted to ask Poopie in the first place. She backtracked, and at the doorway, she froze.
    This time, Poopie sat facing the window, her back shaking with silent tears. She sniffled and leaned over her lap, her hands on her forehead.
    Birdie stood, unsure what to do. She had learned a thing or two growing up with her mom and dad. Sometimes pretending you didn’t notice things made everyone’s lives smoother—especially the people who were hurting. If anybody deserved a smooth life, it was Poopie. Birdie quietly crept to her room and closed the door. She put Saint Anthony on her dresser. She stared at him, the patron saint of going places, as if he could clue her in.
    Where was Poopie going?
    Â 
    The next day Enrico and Birdie sat in silence on the phone. Birdie felt like she could listen to him breathe for hours. She could hear him doodling on his notebook—magnolia flowers, stars, peaches—drawings he would send to her in his next letter.
    She picked at the stray threads on her Hola sweater. Since she’d told him she was coming, there was anticipation stretching across the line too. The idea of seeing him in Mexico hadturned from something funny to talk about to something big and scary to get ready for. What if it wasn’t like it had been this summer? What if there were spaces between them where their lives didn’t meet up? What if Birdie didn’t like it in such a strange place?
    â€œShe wouldn’t look at me today,” Birdie finally said, sitting in her bedroom’s front window and staring out at the peach trees across the lawn. Poopie, with “so much to do,” was standing in the grass, drinking a beer with a hand on her waist. The peach trees had fully changed color now—the leaves were as orange as tangerines with tiny specks of green clinging on. The crisscrossing rows looked like flames leaping up from the grass.
    â€œAsk her, Birdie, what’s wrong.” Enrico had said it three times already.
    â€œShe’ll tell me when she’s ready. She tells me everything.”
    â€œWell, maybe with this you have to ask.”
    Birdie rubbed Honey Babe’s ears distractedly.
    â€œShe said something about seventeen years,” she offered, thinking out loud because she’d already told him this. “In Spanish.” She thought of Saint Anthony. “Do you think she’s going on some top secret trip?”
    Enrico was quiet for a long while. Birdie wanted to curl up in the easy sound of his breath. She felt like she could almost reach out and touch him.
    â€œBirdie, when do you think Poopie will retire?”
    Birdie looked down at the phone cord, pinching it, a nervous prick in her stomach. “Retire?”
    Enrico laughed gently. “She will want to retire sometime. She will want to go home sometime.”
    Home. Birdie swallowed. “This is