Old Mummy Toma had always been known throughout the village as a woman of strict routines and curious priorities. She lived in a crooked little cottage at the edge of the orchard, where apples dropped like raindrops and the scent of ripening pears floated through every window. To most people, fruit was simply food. To Mummy Toma, fruit was life—an obsession so strong that everything else, even tiny Baby Tilly, seemed to fall second to it.
Baby Tilly wasn’t her child; she was her granddaughter, left in Toma’s care after her parents traveled far for work. The villagers expected the old woman to soften, to cradle the baby lovingly and whisper tender stories in her ear. But the moment the fruit season began, Toma’s attention snapped like a twig toward her orchard. She woke before sunrise each day, rubbing her hands with excitement, not to tend to Tilly, but to check which plums were nearly purple enough, which figs had softened just right, which cherries needed netting before the birds claimed their share.
Tilly, meanwhile, lay in her cradle inside the kitchen, cooing at shadows and grabbing at her own toes. Sometimes she cried, hoping for milk or warmth, but Old Mummy Toma heard only the wind in the apple leaves. “Hush, hush,” she muttered vaguely toward the cottage whenever a cry reached her. “These pears won’t inspect themselves.”
One day, as she was polishing a basket of peaches with the pride of a queen preparing her crown jewels, a soft giggle drifted through the doorway. Tilly had managed to wobble her way onto the floor and was now sitting among the scattered fruit, slapping her tiny palms against a round apple. She wasn’t crying—she was delighted.
Mummy Toma watched her for a long moment. The baby’s eyes were bright, her smile sticky with peach juice she had somehow managed to smear on her cheeks. And then, for the first time all season, the old woman laughed—a loud, crackling sound like dry leaves.
“You little peach thief,” she said, scooping Tilly into her lap. The baby squealed, reaching for another apple.
Perhaps it was the sweetness of the moment, or perhaps fruit tasted better when shared, but something shifted in Mummy Toma that day. She still loved her orchard fiercely, but she found room for Tilly too—a small, giggling sprout growing right alongside the trees.
