“Or the timing would have been off.”
“Who knows. I’ve never been big on destiny and all that, but … I’m starting to feel like maybe some things can happen for a reason.”
“‘God bless the broken road.’”
I nod. “Amen.”
Trailing the others, I peel the plump orange and then catch up to Harmony. She stops to look at me and I raise a wedge to her lips. She takes a bite. Swallows.
“It’s good,” she says.
I kiss her, tasting the tart-and-sweet flavor on her lips.
Tart and sweet—just like her.
We all take the oranges into the barn, where my dad, grandpa, brother, and I load the oranges into a brush washer in batches.
The stainless-steel machine is basically a table where the main surface is a series of cylindrical brushes laid side by side. The brushes rotate under parallel pipes that spray water onto the oranges as they’re rolled from one side to the other.
At the end, they’re pushed into a lug (plastic container with vented sides), filling it fast. The kids always like to watch this part up close, seeing the brushes scrub down the oranges all at once with the water’s help.
Once we’ve filled multiple lugs, the adults and Lily each carry one—Jackson and Ari share—inside to the utility kitchen at the side of the house (just a few yards from the barn) and stack them next to the commercial juicer.
“I think I’ve seen one of these at a grocery store before,” Harmony says, observing the transparent front that reveals the big metal wheels and balls inside.
“Greenbough’s?” I ask. What she’s referring to is similar to the stations where you can crush your own peanuts into peanut butter, or grind your own coffee beans, and pay by weight or volume.
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
The utility kitchen is the perfect place for it, with a concrete floor and a drain for when it needs rinsing out.
Oranges roll down a wire chute into the center where the balls smash them until they break open, then push them down to get smashed several more times, raining juice as they go. Peels are ejected out the back.
Grandpa gets a clean plastic jug and sets it under a spigot at the bottom where the juice has accumulated. He turns the spigot and the jug starts to fill.
It’s not long before we’re pouring it into glasses and passing them around. The kids drain theirs in a matter of seconds and ask for more. Harmony sips and swirls hers like a fine wine, stating that it’s “brighter … somehow” than the juice she’s had before, and “more aromatic.”
“It’s because processed juice,” Grandpa tells her, “strips out a lot of the natural aroma from the oils and the compounds. They have to add flavor back in afterward, if you can believe that.”
Rachel and my mom somehow end up sharing embarrassing stories about me. Like the time I was playing in a field bin, burying myself under the oranges to hide, and fell asleep—I was four—and woke up in the air when the bin loader showed up to take the oranges away.
“Garrett was supposed to be watching me,” I remind them.
“You kept running off,” Garrett says.
They also mention the time my cousin and I were trying to see who could pick more oranges in an hour but neither of us wanted to lose time emptying our picking bags more frequently than we had to, and mine busted open and spilled the oranges everywhere.
“To this day, Zack never lets him live that down,” says Rachel.
“Neither do the rest of you,” I say.
Harmony lays her head on my shoulder. “And now, neither will I.”
When Harmony finishes her juice, my grandpa says, “Why don’t you give your girl a tour of the house? She should really see that view from the upper deck.”
“You want to?” I ask her.
“I’d love it.”
