“I need to get out of the car,” Bo said quietly. “But you stay put.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” she replied, wishing her voice wasn’t such a whimper.

“Just stay here,” Bo replied. “Just stay here.”

She didn’t know why they were being shouted at when they were the ones who’d been blinded. She couldn’t comprehend how a barely avoided accident seemed to be spiraling toward a worse one. She was bewildered by the unfolding events, whereas Bo seemed to understand exactly what was going on.

Jiminy had an urge to kiss him like she would if he were going off to war. She leaned over to do it, but he gripped her shoulder hard.

“Why are you trying so hard to get us killed?” he said harshly.

He opened his door and got out, leaving Jiminy stunned.

Thank you, Lyn thought to herself. On the walk over, she’d realized that Roy and Randy thought Bo might speed off to escape their wrath, and that they were determined to make sure this didn’t occur. Bo wouldn’t do that with Lyn there, but she wondered what his reaction would have been otherwise. Lyn knew it was a very good thing she’d come along, and this was a feeling she was unaccustomed to having.

She met Bo’s eyes as he stood up straight beside the car, closing the driver’s door behind him.

“I toldja stop, boy,” Roy said.

“Yes, sir, but I knew another car was coming and we needed to get outta the way in a hurry,” Bo replied.

Roy didn’t like logic that disagreed with him.

“I toldja stop.”

“Sorry, Mr. Tomlins,” Bo said. “Hello, Randy.”

Bo and Randy had gone to high school together. They’d played on the same football team.

“I’d stay quiet if I was you, Bo,” Randy said and scowled.

He was staring past Bo at Jiminy, still seated in the car. He started toward her but was stopped by Bo, who wouldn’t step aside. Lyn silently cursed and with her eyes urged her great-nephew to move. The girl was not the one who needed protecting.

“Outta my way, boy,” Randy ordered.

Bo hesitated for a moment and locked eyes with his old teammate, grappling with a desire to smash his fist into Randy’s face. But feeling his great-aunt’s agitation, Bo reluctantly moved aside instead. Randy pushed roughly past him, rapped his knuckles on the car window, and opened the driver’s side door.

“You okay?” he asked gruffly.

Jiminy nodded stiffly.

“I’m fine.”

“You can speak freely, I won’t let anything happen to you,” Randy said.

“I’m fine.”

“You with this boy willingly?” Roy called.

Lyn sucked air into her lungs. Surely Roy Tomlins didn’t think he’d stumbled across a kidnapping. He just didn’t like what he saw, and wanted to dress it up in a costume that would offend others, too.

Jiminy looked confused.

“With Bo?” Jiminy said. “Yeah, of course.”

This answer didn’t bring Lyn any relief, because she observed its impact on Roy and Randy, who were now looking even angrier.

Lyn cut in. “Mr. Tomlins, Bo’s been working for Miz Hunt over the summer, and that sometimes involves driving Jiminy places.”

As soon as Lyn had started speaking, Roy had put his hand up to block her words, but they’d wended their way through the cracks between his fingers, and now Roy seemed to consider them. Lyn hoped that he would. She recognized that he needed an excuse to back off and leave them alone. She wanted to fashion one for them all.

“That so?” Roy said, turning to Bo. “You working for Miz Hunt?”

Bo nodded. Technically, this was true, though it pained him to play the role his great-aunt was asking him to.

“But she was the one driving,” Randy said.

They’d seen them clearly. That was the point of having the brights on in the first place, to reveal what was going on with folks when they thought it was just them. The white girl had been driving, and the black boy had been sitting too close.

“She wanted to learn how to drive stick shift,” Bo answered. “Sir.”

Lyn’s wrinkled nose had told him to add the “sir.” She was enlisting different parts of her face to ensure that Bo acted the way he should, each twitch and furrow sending a clear signal, working overtime to keep him out of harm’s way.

“And you were teaching her?” Roy queried.

Jiminy sat up straighter in the car, looking as though she was just waking from a hazy dream.

“Bo doesn’t work for me,” she said righteously. “He’s my boyfr—”

“He’s Miz Hunt’s employee,” Lyn interrupted.

She was frustrated that her invisible strings didn’t reach to this troublemaking girl. Furious that the girl didn’t automatically better understand the ways of this place, or what was at stake.

“And our families go way back, as I think you know,” Lyn continued. “Miss Jiminy I’ve known since she was born.”

Jiminy gaped at her. Roy looked from one to the other, and then at Bo, who was staring at the ground. In the silence that followed, the crickets grew louder. Roy shifted his weight and rubbed the back of his hand roughly across his nose.

“Just needed to make sure no one was in any kinda trouble,” he said finally.

Lyn’s insides unclenched. They were going to be okay.

“We weren’t till you blinded us,” Jiminy retorted. “Your head beams nearly killed us.”

Lyn groaned inwardly as Roy’s gaze snapped back to the girl. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Here he’d started out concerned for her, and what did he get in return? Attitude, not gratitude. Though maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised, considering she was Willa and Henry’s granddaughter. He’d seen her around, he realized now. At Grady’s Grill, asking too many questions. She was trouble, that much was for sure.

Roy felt a throbbing in his right temple as he tightened his free hand into a fist. He wanted to teach her a lesson. But what could he do, really? Randy would spring to action with a word, but it was already so late, and Roy was tired. He was ready to move on to the ice cream he was going to eat when he got back home.

“Well, thank goodness no one got hurt,” Lyn said cautiously.

Roy squinted at his captive audience, each in turn.

“Y’all watch yourselves,” he said, his voice thick with implications for disobedience. “I know plenty of folks who wouldn’t be as understandin’ as us.”

Jiminy, Bo, and Lyn remained silent and motionless as Roy and Randy turned and walked back to their truck. But as their taillights disappeared around the far curve a few moments later, Jiminy burst into tears.

Chapter 8

Carlos Castaverde was trying to think of a seven-letter word for the movement of water across a semipermeable membrane when his secretary stuck her head through his office doorway.

“Someone to see you.”

He nodded without looking up. He knew this answer. He could practically taste the word on the tip of his tongue.

“Mr. Castaverde?”

And away it went. He’d had it and lost it. He sighed and looked up from his crossword, hoping that if the answer still lingered in the air nearby, it would somehow find its way back to him.

Delicate and fresh-looking, the young woman standing in his doorway reminded him of watercress.

Since boyhood, Carlos had been fascinated with plants, and studied them with the religious fervor his parents wished he’d apply to the salvation of his soul. But Carlos didn’t care about churches; he cared about field guides, soil acidity, rainfall patterns, and chlorophyll levels. To help him memorize the details of various plant types, he’d begun making instant associations between people he met and plants he already knew. Over time, he’d honed an encyclopedic knowledge of all the major flora, as well as an unshakeable new way of thinking about people.