June lay in the quiet, Melissa warm beside her, one hand moving slow and absent against June’s ribs. The house held them both. Outside, nothing—just the drip from the eaves and the particular silence that followed rain.
She closed her eyes. The end date existed somewhere out there, past the edges of the night.
It could wait.
Chapter 13
Sunflowers
Melissa
Sunday, July 19th
The morning was impossibly bright. Melissa stood at the kitchen window with her coffee, watching June and Lila in the backyard garden—both of them kneeling in the dirt, heads bent close together over something she couldn’t see from here. It was June’s day off, but she’d shrugged and said she had nothing better to do, and when Lila had asked to go outside, June had smiled and nodded.
June was wearing cutoff shorts and an old t-shirt, her hair piled in a messy bun, and even from this distance Melissa could see the smudge of dirt on her cheek. She’d propped her phone against a flowerpot and it was playing something—Melissa could just make out the tinny sound of it through the glass, some song she didn’t recognize, upbeat and chaotic. June was mouthing the words without seeming to notice she was doing it. Lila had picked up on the rhythm and was bouncing as she dug, completely unselfconscious.
Melissa watched them and felt the distance like a physical thing.
Not the distance through the window. The other kind. The kind that lived in the fact that June knew every word to a song Melissa had never heard, that June had probably discovered it through whatever app she was always scrolling on her phone in the evenings—the one with the short videos that June watched with Lila sometimes, both of them dissolving into laughter over something Melissa never quite caught before it disappeared. June belonged to a world that moved faster than Melissa’s, louder and more immediate, a world of things that lasted thirty seconds and then were gone.
She’s twenty-three,Melissa thought.You knew that when you—
She pushed it away and took another sip of coffee.
Her phone buzzed on the counter. David’s name flashed across the screen.
“It’s Sunday,” she said by way of greeting.
“I know. I’m sorry. But Hendricks is wavering.”
Senator Hendricks. One of their remaining solid votes on the broadband provision. Without him, the bill would stall in committee.
“What happened?”
“Thornfield got to him. They’re promising development projects in his district—jobs, investment, the whole package. He’s got a tough reelection coming up, and they’re dangling exactly what he needs.” David paused, and Melissa recognized the pause—it was histhere’s something elsepause. “There’s one more thing.”
“Go ahead.”
“Thornfield’s people have been making calls. Asking questions about you. Not about the bill—about your private life. Yourhousehold. Staff, schedule, that kind of thing. Nothing specific yet, but they’re building a picture of something.”
The coffee cup was still in Melissa’s hand. “What kind of picture?”
“I don’t know yet. But I wanted you to know they’re looking.” Another pause. “I’d be careful, Senator. About anything that could be framed as a distraction.”
Had she seemed distracted? She looked at June through the window.
Maybe.
After she hung up, Melissa stood at the window for a long moment. June had stood up to reach something, and the song had changed to another one she didn’t recognize, and Lila was laughing at something, and the garden was bright and ordinary and completely exposed to anyone who happened to be paying attention.
They’re building a picture of something.
She made herself finish her coffee. Then she went to pack.
An hour later, she found them still in the garden. The backyard had been transformed over the past few weeks—June had convinced Melissa to give over a strip along the fence to vegetables, and Lila had adopted the project with fierce enthusiasm. Now they were expanding further, digging holes along the back fence for sunflowers.
“Mom!” Lila looked up as Melissa approached, her face streaked with dirt and sweat. “We’re planting sunflowers!”
