Heritage (part 4 of a 4-part short story)

“Only your fiancé would send fruit instead of flowers,” Shelly pointed out at the office, a few days later. She was perched on Kit’s desk next to the basket of apples, oranges, grapes, and pears that a messenger had just delivered. “So what did Ramon do to piss you off this time?”

“The usual, only more of the same,” Kit replied. She was hunched over her keyboard working on the Magbalang story. “Go ahead and have some, why don’t you?”

“I just know I’m going to drip all over my shirt, but who cares?” said Shelly. “I’m feeling citrusy today.” She reached for an orange on the top of the pile, but somehow it slipped out of her fingers, bounced off the desk, and rolled across the floor under Shelly’s own table.

Kit stared, as Shelly got on her knees to go after the elusive fruit. “I know,” Shelly laughed, “I’m such a klutz.”

“’When you reach out for just anything’,” Kit remembered, unaware that she was speaking out loud, “’you may not like what you get.’”

“What?” Shelly asked, bumping her head on the underside of the table. “Ow!”

“You know what?” Kit said, saving her story and getting ready to shut her PC down and go. “I just realized I’m really not ready to bear fruit.”

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“You’d better be ready to live with a slob,” Kit told Lola Basyang, as they carried the last of her suitcases into the master bedroom. “I know Papa was tidy, if not always organized--I’m the exact opposite.”

“You are your father’s daughter, and you are also exactly who you are,” the old woman said. “If Ramon could not understand that, then you made the right choice.”

“I know,” Kit sighed. She was becoming accustomed to the lady’s apparently off-topic, but really-actually-relevant segues. “But I’m not sure I want to spend the rest of my life with just you and your stories, no offense.”

“I would not expect you to,” Lola said, looking at Kit as if Kit were the strange one. “After all, you should have a successor to carry on the family tradition.”

“You would look at it that way,” Kit laughed, amused to find that she didn’t really mind. “You know what they say, though, Lola, a good man is hard to find.”

“When you are right with yourself, the right man will find you,” Lola informed her, beginning to unpack the nearest suitcase. “I know something about this...”

Kit smiled and sat on the bed, ready to fold clothes and listen.