Chapter 31
The sweet smell of oranges pervaded everything. Sadie’s song had led me to a row of portable housing units on an orange farm. Although the harvest was over, there was still enough of the reject fruit around to infuse even the itinerant worker’s cabins with citrus scent. The world looked like I was seeing it through a kaleidoscope filter, yet the smell of oranges had metaphorically and literally grounded me.
My prize was poorly hidden in the back corner of an old cupboard, wrapped in an old blanket and tied with hay band. Downright miracle it hadn’t been stolen by someone else. Actually, it probably was some sort of ‘miracle’. Jake might well have used some version of his charm to dissuade anyone from going near his stuff.
Concentrating as hard as I could, I tried to grab the
