LITMIR.BIZ

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to get some rest?”

      “Do I have a choice?”

      Again, her heart ached. She wanted to yell at him, “Don’t hate me! It’s me! It’s Sunny! I’m here to help.”

      Until she knew what was going on, though, she didn’t dare.

      Ryan didn’t wait for her answer. “C’mon. I’ll take you back. We’ll go a different way so you see how far down it goes.

      “Listen…maybe I came across all wrong. I’m just really frustrated by all this. All I want to do is get this harvest in some way, somehow, or else call it a loss and take my lumps. Trust me. I’ll make more money if I can get the harvest to market than I would with the insurance. All the insurance money will do is maybe pay off my seed money, my fertilizer and my pesticide bills. Diesel? Electricity? My labor? Forget that. But—”

      She lay a hand on his arm. “I’m not the enemy, Ryan. I know how hard farming is, how dicey it can be. You have to trust me.”

      He nodded, an abrupt jerk of his head that told her he didn’t, in fact, trust her.

      Ryan seemed more rigid, less at ease, on the trip back. They left the field behind and came into the farmyard proper, whizzing past a big old barn, a grain silo, some outbuildings. Ahead, she could see the lights of the house, contrasting with the descending twilight.

      They slowed as they passed a tiny but colorful vegetable garden.

      “Wow! Look at the size of those tomatoes! You really know how to grow ’em!”

      “That’s Mee-Maw’s. Want some? I need to pick the ripe ones for her anyway—Son of a—”

      He braked suddenly, the movement jerking her forward.

      “What?”

      Ryan switched off the four-wheeler’s engine, stalked over to the vegetable garden and knelt down. With one hand, he began jerking up a perfectly healthy tomato vine by its roots, the careful framework of stakes tumbling to the ground.

      Becca gasped. “What are you doing?”

      He shoved it at her. “Pick off the tomatoes—ripe and green. Throw the vine down way over yonder—don’t put it down near the garden. I need to check the rest of these plants.”

      Bemused, she did as he ordered, stacking the round red fruit on the seat of the four-wheeler. It was only as she turned the vine over in her hands that she saw what had made him yank up the bush.

      Wrapped around the base of the tomato plant, as thin as a garden snake, was a young dodder vine.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      BECCA’S HAND INSTANTLY recoiled from the vine, though she told herself she was being silly. The plant, no matter how serpentine it looked, wasn’t dangerous to anything but a hapless plant unlucky enough to be its target.

      Behind her, Ryan let loose a string of expletives, half muttered under his breath. She turned from plucking the last of the green tomatoes off the bush to see him yanking up still more plants by their roots.

      The investigator in her noted the placement of those plants. The vine had grown on host plants in a checkerboardlike pattern all over the garden. She’d been around farming all her life, and she knew that what she was seeing was not natural.

      No, if this had been a natural invasion of a parasitic plant, the vine would have attacked one spot and spread outward in a radius.

      How had it traveled all the way from the cotton field—far enough that it took a four-wheeler to get there—to the kitchen garden so close to the house?

      Squash plants, pea plants, okra, cucumber—one or two each joined the tomato plant Becca had discarded well away from the garden. Ryan crossed over to a shed, came back with a handful of kindling and a box of matches. He knelt, building a quick funeral pyre for the plants and tossed in a lit match.

      “You’re not playing around.” Becca studied him for a long moment. Was his reaction normal frustration or a little too vehement?

      For now, Becca was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt…but knowing her dad wouldn’t do the same ate at her.

      “If there’s even a scrap of these left, the vine can spread. Mee-Maw’s worked too hard on this garden for her to lose it now.” His features were grim as he watched to be sure the plants caught.

      The flames shot up higher and smoke billowed, hanging low in the twilight. Becca said nothing, still just observing, wanting to believe in Ryan. Abruptly, he turned and started back for the shed.

      “Watch that for me,” he said. “I need some old bricks to surround the fire. All I need is for this fire to get out of control. It’s dry enough that it would spread. There’s a water hose coiled up near the back porch if it spreads.”

      He was back again in a few moments, laden down with chipped and broken bricks. By the time Ryan had made a ring around the fire, the green plants had decided to succumb. Becca noted that the thicker dodder vines were more resistant to the flames than the tender green leaves of the vegetable plants.

      Ryan seemed to read her thoughts. “First time I spotted this stuff in the cotton field, I thought that the best way to handle it was to burn it. So I doused a pile of cotton plants and vines with a little lighter fluid and tried to do just that. A day or so later I noticed that not all the vine had been destroyed and that it had latched on to whatever thick, bushy plant it found near enough to grab hold of. It’s downright creepy, if you ask me.”

      The heat of the fire was suffocating in the muggy August evening, but Becca was still mesmerized. She pulled her eyes from the hypnotic flames. “So, you have to build this big a fire?”

      Sweat had beaded up on Ryan’s brow, and his T-shirt clung to him. “All I can figure is the vines have sucked so much water out of host plants that killing the vine itself is that much harder. You have to burn it a long time…kind of like getting seaweed started for an oyster bake. For a whole field of cotton, that’s not so easy…but at least I know what to do to save Mee-Maw’s tomatoes.”

      Mentioning Mee-Maw seemed to summon her. His grandmother swung open the back door and stepped out onto the porch. “Ryan? What in tarnation are you up to? It’s too dry and too late for a bonfire—not to mention it’s got to be eighty degrees out here even at this time of night!”

      Ryan sighed. “Help me carry these tomatoes to her, will you?”

      Becca gathered up an armload of tomatoes and followed him to the back porch.

      “Mee-Maw…I’m afraid that vine’s spread to your garden. I had to destroy some of your plants, okay? I’m sorry, but if you want a chance at salvaging the rest of it, the host plants had to be burned.”

      Mee-Maw’s face sagged, and suddenly Becca could see the woman’s years. “Here, let me get a pan to put ’em in. We’ll fry the green tomatoes, and the ripe ones needed picking anyway.” She cast a nervous glance at Ryan. “You keep an eye on that fire. Should have got an old barrel out of the—”

      “Yes, ma’am, Mee-Maw. I know. I should have.”

      The old lady hustled into the kitchen for a pan, shooing Ryan away as soon as he’d dumped his cargo. “You go on back to the fire.”

      Becca, though, followed her into the house, the dog at her heels. “Is it okay? The dog, I mean?” she asked. She piled the green tomatoes down atop the red ones. “They’re beautiful tomatoes. It’s a shame.”

      “Wilbur’s fine. He likes to loaf, but he stays inside mostly. Thank you, ma’am, ’bout my tomatoes. Some of ’em are turning, looks like. You like fried green tomatoes?”

      Becca nodded, gazing out the window over the sink at Ryan as he poked at the fire with an iron rake. When she turned her attention back toward Mee-Maw, she saw the woman was looking out the window, as well. “Yes, ma’am. My grandmother

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