The Peach Keeper

EIGHTEEN

The Peach Keepers

1936

The first time it happened, Georgie woke up, suddenly freezing. She didn’t know why. It was so hot that summer that she had to sleep on top of her bedsheets, and she still melted every night. But that night she woke up to her perspiration freezing and cracking on her skin. She shivered and looked to the window, expecting to see the world frozen over. The world was changing, she thought sleepily. It had been changing for months. And now that Tucker, with his charming smile and magical ways, had moved into the Madam with them, Georgie felt the changes even more. There was a lot of hope in the air, hope that their financial problems would soon be over with this peach orchard they were planning. And her father, who ignored her on good days and blamed her for her mother’s death during childbirth on bad ones, even seemed happy to see her at dinner now. He was happy to see her because Tucker was happy to see her. Tucker changed people that way. And because of that she ignored the way he would brush up against her in the hallways, how he was always around when she got out of the bath. She ignored his restlessness and the way his temper would flare up sometimes. Agatha had told her she was being silly, anyway, and that she had no idea how lucky she was. Tucker had changed Agatha, too. She’d once been able to tell Agatha anything, but now Agatha burned with something hot every time she saw Georgie, and Georgie didn’t know why. Georgie had felt very alone lately. She didn’t realize just how alone she was up here on Jackson Hill until her friends stopped coming to see her. And at parties, they ignored her. So Georgie spent most of her time in her room now, mending dresses so she could wear them one more year, or rearranging the dolls displayed in her cupboard, brushing their hair and ironing their aprons, and dreaming of the day when all these changes would be over and they could all go back to being normal again.

There was the smell of smoke and peaches around her that night as she sat up, shivering in her bed. She was used to that, the peach smell, anyway. Tucker carried it on his skin. It followed him around wherever he went. That’s why he said birds bothered him so—because they liked the way he smelled. Georgie had never argued, but she’d always thought the birds swooping down on him seemed angry, not enamored.

She looked around her dark room, and that’s when she saw a small orange light by the door. The lit end of a cigarette. Someone was standing by her closed door. Her heart leapt in her chest. It felt like a fist striking her from inside.

Tucker walked out of the shadow. He put the cigarette to his lips and took a puff, brightening his face and making it glow. He dropped the cigarette to the floor and stepped on it, and everything was dark again.

When he came to her, she didn’t understand what was happening. When he finally left, she stayed in her bed for the rest of the night, too afraid to get up. She heard him come back down from his attic bedroom in the morning, pause by her door, then walk away. When the house was quiet, she finally got up and washed, but then she propped a chair against the doorknob and wouldn’t let anyone in until her father demanded she join them for dinner. A week, two weeks, passed, and Tucker made no move toward her again, and she thought that was it. She’d actually begun to recover. Her world was no longer the same, but she knew she would survive.

But then he came back.

It went on all summer. No matter how many times she reached out for help, no one listened to her. He made them not listen. She couldn’t see an end to it. It was going to go on like this forever unless she stopped it. But she wasn’t that brave. She’d never been that brave.

Until the day she finally accepted that she was pregnant.

That day, she took the cook’s frying pan to her room with her. And when night fell, she stood behind her door and waited.

After she hit him, an odd thud that sounded like something being dropped in the next room, she just stood there, as if waiting for everything to go back to the way it was. She began to tremble. Nothing was different. She was still pregnant. And she had just hurt Tucker, maybe even killed him. Her father would never understand. No one would understand. Except …

“Show him to me,” Agatha said after Georgie had run to her house in the mist, tripping and falling along the way so that when she finally got to Hickory Cottage she was covered with dirt and scratches. She knew the way into the house that led to the back stairs, the stairs they’d used to sneak past Agatha’s parents many times. She’d woken Agatha up and begged her to listen, begged her to help. She trusted Agatha more than anyone in the world. And what had happened this summer couldn’t possibly have erased a lifetime of friendship. It didn’t just go away like that. At least, she prayed it didn’t. She’d lost so much already.

Agatha was strangely quiet as Georgie led her back up to the Madam. Tucker was right where she had left him, on the floor of her bedroom. The frying pan was sitting on his chest, like a weight keeping him from floating away. Agatha knelt by him, muttering something Georgie couldn’t understand. She put one of her hands on his head, then jerked back as if she’d been burned. She stood and said, “We have to do this quick. He’s not all gone. And he’s angry. We have to dig a hole close by. We can’t carry him far. It has to be in the yard here. If we do it on the hill, it’ll wash. Hurry, Georgie, let’s get started.” This was what Agatha was so good at, taking charge, organizing, breaking things down into manageable bits.

They worked by candlelight. In the kitchen, Georgie sifted together pepper and sawdust the carpenter bees had created when they’d burrowed into the porch. The cook had once told her that if you sprinkle sawdust and pepper in front of a door, no one would be able to leave that room. She put it in front of the doors to her father’s and brother’s bedrooms, hoping it would give her and Agatha time to do what they needed to do.

They dug in the yard for hours, as far away from the house as they could but not so close to the precipice that the hill would give way. She would never forget how quiet it was. The mist below them hid the town from sight but also muffled everything. It felt as though they were the only people in the world, two young women about to bury the symbol of their helplessness, as if that’s all it would take to make them whole again.

The half-moon had fled across the night sky by the time Agatha said the hole was big enough.

They had to go back into the Madam to get him. They dragged him to the window in Georgie’s room and pushed him out. Then they took him by his arms and legs and half carried, half dragged him across the backyard, leaving a trail of black as though lightning had scorched the earth.

After they were done, they stood there as the sun rose over the mist. They were dirty and shaky and mostly numb.

Agatha finally turned to Georgie and embraced her. It took a moment for Georgie to realize that Agatha was crying, and Agatha never cried.

“Oh, Agatha,” Georgie said. “I’m so sorry.”

“No!” Agatha said, pulling back. “You have nothing to be sorry about. This is my fault. What kind of friend lets this happen? I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

“What am I going to do?” Georgie asked. “Tell me what to do, Agatha.”

“We’ll get through this. Don’t worry. No matter what happens, I’m here for you. I’ll never let you down again.”

“What if they find out it was me?”

Agatha took her hand. “As long as I’m alive, Georgie, no one will ever know it was you. I promise.”

And seventy-five years later, Agatha had kept that promise.