Peaches Read Free Page B

big brown eyes frank and pleading. Beneath it a white banner read: Mitzie Needs Your Help.
    As usual, Leeda’s grandmom’s annual Shetland Rescue dinner was a rousing success. The Primrose Cottage Inn, a sprawlingCawley-Smith–owned B & B with enormous white porches and rooms decorated in the style of different states, was packed, despite the hefty price tag of $250 a head. Leeda surveyed the crowd, looking for one cute guy or at least one guy below fifty. One man across the room, Horatio Balmeade of the Balmeade Country Club, locked eyes with her and gave her the old triangle stare: left eye, right eye, chest. Leeda curled over herself protectively.
    “Don’t slouch, Leeda. It’s unattractive.” Her dad had temporarily looked up from his papers, which he took any opportunity to shuffle through. Leeda suspected he did it even when he didn’t have to in order to shield himself from the women he was always surrounded by. She straightened up and sighed loudly, hooking a finger into one of her blond starlet curls.
    “And honey,” her mom added stiffly, “smile.”
    Leeda smiled huge and fakely and rolled her eyes almost undetectably. It was one of her mother’s pet theories that if you smiled, even when you were pissed off or depressed, it made you actually feel happy—which Leeda thought was a load of crap. But she acted like she believed it. With her mother, Leeda acted a lot.
    Ever since she’d been little, Leeda had sensed the way her mother’s eyes lit up when Danay entered the room and how when Leeda entered, they glazed over. Leeda had pushed herself into the top of her class while Danay had landed there with ease. Leeda’d tried to develop the same style of jokes, the same fine-line walk between casual and flawless. She had never been able to wear it as well. And maybe that was why her mom never filled her end of the bargain Leeda had secretly struck between them. Lucretia never lit her eyes up any brighter for her youngestdaughter. After telling Leeda to smile, Lucretia let her eyes drift to Danay like metal to a magnet.
    Leeda scanned the room, noticing that the waiter who’d brought the lobster claw was glancing at her every so often. Leeda was generally loved by waiters. In fact, she was pretty sure she was loved by just about everyone except her mom. At school, people courted her friendship like they were paying homage to a queen. When she went out, people’s eyes lingered on her. Last summer, when the Cawley-Smiths had visited Tokyo, she’d been so loved by all the guys at the clubs, they kept asking if she was Charlize Theron.
    Leeda was like David Hasselhoff. She was loved in Japan.
    “Hey,” Danay said, tapping Leeda’s toe under the table and meeting her with a sparkling, perfect gaze of sisterly love. “What’re you doing for spring break?”
    “Camping at Tybee Beach. With Rex.”
    Danay looked at their mom. “Y’all are letting her go camping with a guy? You wouldn’t even let me go with my girlfriends!”
    Lucretia fiddled with the rings on three of her fingers, then scanned the wall for the clock. Leeda’s parents liked to forget that Rex existed since he lived in a crappy brick duplex on the edge of Pearly Gates Cemetery across town, among other things.
    He’d been Leeda’s boyfriend since October. He was the hottest guy in Bridgewater, without a doubt. And he adored her. When he’d asked her out, her knee-jerk reaction had been to say no. Her second knee-jerk reaction had been to say yes because it had suddenly occurred to her that dating someone like Rex might make her mom sit up and take notice for once. Only Rex had turned out to be an okay guy. A great escape. And maybe theone place in her life where she felt maybe she was showing her parents who she truly was after all. She wished he had come; she always felt more solid with her family when he was around.
    “Actually, Leeda, your father and I were talking….”
    Leeda felt her stomach clench instinctively.
    “We