Harmony pulls back and looks at me with a line between her brows. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset her ...”
My dad stands up like he’s about to go after her, but holds back. “I’m sure she’s just … a little emotional. She’ll be fine.”
Half a minute later, the front door swings back open and out comes my mom with one of the old guitars she keeps in the den. She’s holding it to her chest, face out, and tuning it as she walks. Dad steps aside so she can get back to her seat, at which point she says, “Would it be too much to ask you to play that again?”
Gaping, Harmony replies, “Um. Yeah. Of course.”
I give her a nod of encouragement.
Once again, she starts to play.
As she strums, my mom picks up the rhythm, hums where she doesn’t know the words but still follows the melody. Mom apparently remembers a few phrases during the chorus and sings them in a harmony she’s worked out, while also playing individual strings on her guitar.
This is surreal, hearing Harmony and my mom making music together.
What started out cautious finishes strong, and nobody hesitates to applaud this time.
Harmony’s eyes are bright with admiration. “That was amazing.”
“Oh, it was nothing,” my mom tells her. “It’s your song. It was just so beautiful, I wanted to try it out.”
“You’re very talented,” Harmony tells her. “Griffin told me you used to play small gigs all over the Southwest.”
“I did. It was a good time, but I much prefer this kind of playing. Quiet, with people I know. No pressure. Don’t get me wrong, I admire what the two of you do out there, filling up arenas and all that. It wasn’t for me though.”
Harmony leans into me. “Well, I’m grateful Griffin learned music from you. I love working with him.”
“We can see that,” my dad says. “So I think we can let bygones be bygones”—he glances at my sister pointedly—“and enjoy the fact that you two are here with us.”
Rachel sighs. “Fine.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Can we pick oranges now or what?”
I get why Rachel has reservations, but I don’t see why my story with Harmony is so bad. Most couples have easier beginnings and fight when things go stale; Rachel knows that well enough as a single mom. Harmony and I got a lot of our fighting out of the way already, so now we can focus on the good stuff. And I’m not saying we won’t have more fights down the road, but if I’m going to fight with anyone, I sure as hell want it to be her.
Fifteen minutes later, we’ve all got canvas picking bags strapped to our fronts—except the kids because they’ll put oranges in their parents’ bags.
Walking past several rows, we see dozens of workers perched on aluminum tripod ladders, deftly filling their own bags. Those with full bags head over to the big square field bins that line the ground between trees, unlatch the flaps at the bottoms of their bags, and let the oranges tumble out.
I tell Harmony that when the bins are filled with a good thousand pounds of oranges, other workers will come in with a bin loader that looks like it’s got a giant claw-machine arm, and pick up the bins and dump them into a trailer.
“Do you pack and ship the oranges from here too?” she asks.
“No, once we get them loaded we send them to a Sunkist packing house. Most of them anyway. We set aside a few bins’ worth for local buyers too.”
We find an untouched row and the rest of us set to work looking for oranges that are either small, blemished, or otherwise less aesthetic (the kind that aren’t good to sell) amid the tick of leaves brushing in the delicate breeze.
“Twist, don’t pull,” I say, showing Harmony the way we pick oranges.
She tries it. The orange resists for a second, then snaps off.
“Perfect.”
Harmony smiles at me. She looks cute with her sleeves rolled and a pair of work boots on. The afternoon sun puts catchlights in her eyes.
“You’re different here,” she says. “More at ease.”
I shrug. “It’s one of the few places where I feel like I fit in without trying.”
