Excerpt: Avocado Highway

“Then take the farm and run it.”
“Yes, but I hate avocados.”
“There's a non sequitur for you.”
“It's an avocado farm, didn't I say?”
“No, you didn't. Why do you hate avocados? They seem pretty delicious to me.”
“Well, look, there's one growing right there,” and he pointed over their heads to a scraggly avocado tree. Marthann realized for the first time that she had swept mostly avocado leaves when she swept the labyrinth. “See how ugly the tree is? All misshapen, with dusty leaves piled up under it. And the fruit, black, bumpy. I don't even like the smell of the trees. And the farm is down in a God-forsaken place called Rainbow, on the way to San Diego. I don't want to give up my house in Santa Barbara. Aghhh!”
She looked at him and saw that he had worried himself into a state. She looked up into the tree and saw what she prayed was a sound avocado, not a bruised or rotten one. Putting her hand on his shoulder, she climbed up on the low wall, and twisted the fruit off the stem it clung to.
“Do you have a knife of any kind?” she asked.
“Just this little one on my key chain.”
“That'll do.” She took the small pocketknife, opened the blade, and cut around the avocado from stem end to blossom end and back. She wiped the blade on the leg of her jeans and handed the knife back to him. Then she twisted apart the two halves of the avocado.
“Here,” she said, handing him the two halves, “What do you see?” She rose from the wall, mounted the steps, and returned to the house, leaving him holding the avocado halves. When she looked down from her window, he was sitting cross-legged in the center of the labyrinth, staring at the avocado. “Thank you, Lord,” she said, for she had not known what gave her the inspiration to say and do those things for Nathan. God was acting through her, she was pretty sure.