That whole week was just about the hottest I’d ever lived through. Every day Daddy came in from the fields looking like he’d been dunked in a swimming pool. Thomas had come by to help one morning, too, and even though he didn’t say anything, I could tell by the look in his dark eyes when he came in to get a cold drink that he’d never worked that hard or been that hot in his life. Still, he didn’t complain, even if he downed that sweet tea like it was the best thing he’d ever tasted.
By Thursday night I felt like I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t been sticky and salty, my hair clinging to my skin all around my head till I wanted to cut it as short as Daddy’s just to give me some relief. In every room we had ceiling fans and big box fans and little tiny round fans working as hard as they could, and it still wasn’t ever enough.
It would’ve been better if we’d had the AC going, too, but our unit had broken in May and Mama refused to let a repairman come out to look at it.
“Why in the Sam Hill not?” Daddy had asked when she’d stopped him calling the air-conditioning company.
“I just don’t think we should run it right now, Miles,” Mama had said, holding his phone behind her back so he couldn’t make the call. “It’s got all those chemicals in it—just think of the ways it could hurt our girls. The fans are better. We got along fine without the AC for years and years, didn’t we?”
Daddy had gaped at her for a minute but then laughed. “You are the strangest woman alive,” he’d said to Mama, and then kissed her on the lips. I’d tried hard to forget I’d heard the conversation at all, even though it was impossible to do once the heat set in. I never liked noticing the ways that Mama was different. Mama had always worried about me and Mylie, probably more than most mothers. But it had never been as bad as last Saturday night, with Mama sitting in the ghostly light of the fridge, picking seeds out of watermelons.
That afternoon the temperature had hit 105, which was a record high for Maryville and nearly everywhere around us, too.
“I can practically hear the crops drying up and dying out there in the fields,” Daddy told Mama, his voice flat as rolled-out pie dough, while I was weeding in the big garden. I squinted in the sunlight as I picked; Mylie had stolen my sunglasses earlier that morning, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out where she’d put them.
Mama and Daddy had both spent all of Mylie’s nap time working outside, Daddy driving the combine to finish up the July harvest of winter wheat and Mama picking boxes full of tomatoes to sell at the stand. We’d got so behind on everything this month that lots of the tomatoes had swelled and split down the middle, turning to mush right on their plants so they were good for nothing but the compost heap. Now Mama and Daddy stood by the tractor, Daddy twisting his baseball cap over in his work-tanned hands.
“It’s getting to be the only thing I can think about, Suzie. We’re not set up for this much summer irrigation, and everything’s suffering for it. At this point I’ll be grateful if we just break even this year. It’s not looking likely.”
“We’ll make ends meet somehow,” Mama said.
“I sure hope so.” But when Mama turned to go back inside, hopeful wasn’t exactly the look on Daddy’s face.
The heat didn’t make any of us happy, but Mylie was the worst. She was never much of a one for going to bed, but lately she’d been pitching more fits than ever, probably because it felt like an oven inside our room. Most nights Daddy put her to bed, but Thursdays were special, and Mama took over bedtime so that Daddy and I could watch our favorite detective show together. We’d been watching TV mysteries nearly since I got old enough to talk, and we always had a competition to see who could solve them first. Daddy usually won, but I was getting better these days and beat him plenty.
Mysteries were a little like math. When all the pieces slotted together in my head, it felt just like solving a problem and knowing I’d got it right, the way everything inside me suddenly snapped into perfect order.
Tonight Mylie was still screaming her head off when our show started, and I turned it up real loud so we could hear it.
“Turn it down, Della,” said Daddy, rubbing his forehead so hard it looked more pink than tan. “The noise’ll just keep Mylie up longer. Put on the captions instead.”
I huffed out a sigh and did as he asked. Mylie cried so loud through the first half of the show that I could hardly even read the subtitles, my thoughts were so jumbled, but she finally quieted down just as the cops put the wrong person in jail and a commercial started.
Mama stomped out of my bedroom, looking like a wild woman with her hair all jammed up into a ponytail and sweaty wisps plastered to her forehead.
“I tell you, I cannot take the sass of that child anymore,” she said, going into the kitchen and pouring herself a big glass of ice-cold filtered water from the refrigerator. Mama never drank water from the tap, only from her special pitcher with the filter in it to keep all the bad stuff out.
Daddy muted the TV and turned to look at Mama. “Sorry she was so hard, Suzie. Wanna come finish the show with us?”
Mama sat down on the sofa next to him, the water sloshing quietly in her glass. She closed her eyes and let out a big, long breath. “I’m just so tired of fighting with her over every little dumb thing. She’s not even a year and a half. Isn’t that way too young for this? Della never had a tantrum till she was at least three.”
Daddy put his hand around Mama’s shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “Nothing lasts forever,” he said, unmuting the TV as our show came back on. “This won’t, either.”
Mylie stayed asleep all the way through the rest of the show, but Mama got shiftier and shiftier, her eyes getting wide and her fingers twisting together as she watched. Just a few minutes before it finished up, I put all the clues together and came up with an answer I was sure was right—but before I could open my mouth to beat Daddy to the solution, Mama pointed at the screen.
“It’s the social worker,” she said, looking queasy. “She was the only one who wasn’t with them that night, right? And she had access to all those files.”
Right as she finished talking, the detectives on the television came to the same conclusion.
Daddy looked at Mama with his eyebrows up, smiling. “Nice job, Suzie,” he said. Mama almost never played our game; she just liked to watch, she said, and have a chance to rest like she never could during the day. “I was miles away from that. I’m impressed.”
I clapped my mouth shut as the credits started to roll. That had been my guess, too.
“Wasn’t hard. But I don’t like this show,” Mama said, pressing her lips together till they turned white. “Don’t want Della watching it no more. That woman was hurting a little girl, just like people keep on trying to hurt my girls.”
“What do you mean?” Daddy asked, reaching over to hit the power button on the remote, his voice like a cliff-edge walk—just a breath away from getting really, really upset.
“My daddy keeps telling me, Miles. He keeps on telling me there are people out there wanting to hurt Mylie and Della.”
The only sound in the whole house was the whir-whir-whir of half a dozen fans, blades rotating around and around so fast they became invisible. Daddy and I both stared.
Mama’s daddy, my grandpa Case, died of a heart attack when I was eight years old.
“Suzanne, honey,” said Daddy at the breakfast table the next morning. He wasn’t looking at Mama—he was looking down at the butter he was spreading across his biscuit instead. His words were careful and slow, like soldiers creeping into enemy territory. “I made you an appointment with Dr. DuBose for later this morning, okay? It’s been awhile since you been to see him. I can drive you there, if you like.”
“You what?” asked Mama, jaw tightening. “I haven’t got time today, Miles. Who’d watch Mylie and Della?”
“I don’t need watching,” I said. “And I could stay with Mylie. Or we could go to Miss Amanda’s.”
Mama kept on like I was no louder than a fly buzzing round the kitchen. “And what do you mean, you’d drive me there? There’s no way you could take the day off chores today, not with this drought. And if I drove myself, what would you do all on your own? In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been spending a whole lot of time out on the farm lately.”
“I know, Suzie, thanks for that.” Daddy rubbed at his forehead. Mylie picked her sippy cup up experimentally and launched it at Mama’s head; Mama caught it and put it back on the tray without even looking up.
“Never thought I’d say this, but I miss having my parents here. Things seemed to run a little smoother around here with four adults instead of just two. Still,” Daddy added after a moment, his voice quieter than ever. “I think you ought to take that appointment. We can leave the girls here—I’ll call Amanda and tell her to keep an eye on them. It could be nice, Suzie, having some time just for the two of us. Thomas is coming in a bit. He can handle a few chores by himself for one morning.”
“Honestly,” said Mama, sounding about ready to take Daddy’s head off with one bite. “I’m fine. Actually, I’ve been feeling more like myself than I have since Mylie was born. Nothing’s wrong with me, and I don’t need to go wasting Dr. DuBose’s time or my own. And besides, last I checked, there’s twice as many of those squash beetles out there—and if we don’t get weeding done out in your vegetable field, the seed heads’ll start popping and we’ll be in a world of trouble—”
“I’m not saying anything’s wrong with you. Just that you haven’t been to see him in a long time. Won’t you be running out of pills soon? When does your prescription expire?”
“Not for months. Now finish shredding that biscuit and stop bugging me.”
After we’d finished eating, Daddy took his keys down off their hook by the door and went outside. The pickup engine rumbled to life, but either Mama didn’t notice or she was ignoring that sound as hard as she could.
I closed my eyes and thought of numbers. One. Two. Four. Eight. Sixteen.
Half an hour later, Thomas Bradley’s blue car pulled into the driveway. Daddy gave up and turned the truck engine off.
“Hey, Della, how you doing?” Thomas called, waving as he and Daddy passed through the house to the back door, which was the quickest way to get to the fields.
Daddy didn’t even look at me. His face was hard, stormy as one of the rain clouds we hadn’t seen all summer long.