Marjorie always saved the best for last. It was her way — a kind of hope, a promise that the end of the day, or the meal, or the season, might still surprise her with sweetness. So when the summer began to fade, and the farmer’s market offered its final harvest, she bought a single, perfect peach and placed it on the windowsill to ripen.
She lived alone now. Frank had passed three years ago, after sixty years of shared peaches and silences. Their love had never been loud, but it had filled the rooms like sunlight — quiet, constant, warm. Sometimes too quiet. There were things she never said. Things she always meant to.
The peach sat there for days, golden with a blush of red, catching the afternoon light. Each morning, Marjorie would press it gently, testing for softness, for surrender. But she would stop herself. Not yet. Not today.
She waited for the right moment. A cool breeze. The right song on the radio. A sign.
One morning, she found it collapsed in on itself, a soft wound leaking nectar down the sill. The ants had found it before she had.
Marjorie cleaned the mess in silence. She didn’t cry. She just stared out the window at the bare trees, a knotted thing in her chest.
Next time, she thought.
But she was eighty-seven.
And peaches don’t come in winter.