Chapter 13
Sunflowers
Melissa
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 his there’s something else pause. “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. Your household. 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!”
“I’m not sure they’ll have time to grow before the end of summer,” June said, pushing a strand of hair out of her face, “but we figured we’d try anyway.”
“June says they can grow taller than you!”
“Eight feet, sometimes more.” June’s eyes met Melissa’s, and something warm and careful passed between them. “My grandma used to say if you give them enough sun, water, and support, they just keep reaching.”
Melissa looked at her for a beat longer than she should have.
“I have to go to Salem,” she said. “At noon. I’ll be gone until Thursday.”
Lila’s face fell. “That’s a long time.”
“I know, sweetheart. I’m sorry. But there’s an important vote coming up.”
“The infrastructure bill?” Lila asked, pronouncing it carefully.
“That’s right.”
“You talk about it a lot.” Lila went back to her digging, movements a little less enthusiastic. “Will you call?”
“Every night. I promise.”
“Okay.” Small voice. Resigned.
Melissa’s heart cracked in the familiar way. She pulled Lila into a hug, holding on longer than usual, breathing in dirt and sunshine and the strawberry shampoo that was apparently Lila’s own choice from a shopping trip she hadn’t been part of.
“I love you,” she said quietly. “You know that, right?”
“I know.” Lila’s arms tightened. “I love you too.”
When she finally let go, June was watching with an expression that made Melissa’s chest ache—something soft and sad that June smoothed away quickly when their eyes met.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Melissa asked. “Inside?”
June nodded, brushing dirt from her knees. “Lila, keep planting while I’m gone. Two inches deep, twelve inches apart.”
“I know,” Lila said, already focused again.
They walked through the kitchen and into the living room, and the house was quiet around them, just the muffled sound of Lila’s song still playing faintly through the window.
“Three days,” June said.
“It feels longer than it should.” Melissa moved to the window, watching Lila work. “She’s gotten so good at that. She never would have done something like this a few months ago—getting her hands dirty, being outside for hours. She would have sat in her room with a book.”
“She just needed permission to make a mess.” June came to stand beside her. “Kids are like that. They’re waiting for someone to tell them it’s okay.”
“I never told her that.” Melissa’s voice was quiet. “I don’t know how you do it. How you know what she needs before she knows it herself.”
“I just pay attention.”
“I’ve tried to pay attention her whole life. I never seem to get it right.” She paused. “When Michael first brought up having children, I wasn’t sure I wanted them. My career was just starting to take off. I almost said no.”
June was silent, listening.
“But he pushed, and I convinced myself it was what I wanted too, and then Lila was born and I loved her immediately, fiercely, in a way that terrified me. But loving her wasn’t the same as knowing how to be her mother.
” Melissa’s throat tightened. “I’ve spent seven years feeling like I’m failing at the most important job I’ve ever had. ”
“You’re not failing.”
“You’ve been here six weeks, and she’s happier than she’s been in years. What does that say about me?”
“It says you made a good choice when you hired me.” June’s voice was firm but gentle. “It doesn’t say anything about you as a mother. She talks about you constantly when you’re not here. You’re her whole world, Melissa.”
“I feel like a guest in her life.” She turned from the window. “When I watch you with her, I see what it’s supposed to look like. The ease. The warmth. I never had that with my own mother, and I don’t know how to give Lila something I never learned.”
“You’re learning now. That’s what matters.”
“Is it enough?”
“It’s a start.” June reached out and squeezed her hand—brief, warm. “Go to Salem. Fight for your bill. We’ll hold down the fort.”
Melissa wanted to ask all the questions she’d been sitting on for weeks.
About what this was between them. About what happened when summer ended.
About whether June could see a future here or whether Melissa was the only one quietly, desperately hoping for one.
But the words stuck in her throat, and June was looking at her with those steady green eyes, and the house was quiet except for Lila’s distant singing.
“I should finish packing,” Melissa said.
“Okay.” June held her gaze a moment longer. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
Melissa nodded and walked away, and didn’t ask the question that followed her all the way upstairs: but for how long?
The car was scheduled for noon.
At eleven-forty, Melissa brought her bag down to the front door and found June and Lila in the front yard, arranging stones around the base of a small bush they’d planted near the walkway.
Lila saw her first and came running, and Melissa caught her and held on, and made the promises again—every night, Wednesday, I’ll be back before you know it—and Lila nodded with that small resigned acceptance that Melissa was still learning to bear.
“Go inside and get my sunglasses?” Melissa asked her. “They’re on the kitchen counter.”
Lila ran. Melissa straightened up and found June watching the street.
“There’s a car,” June said quietly. “Across from Mrs. Pellerin’s. It’s been there since this morning. I don’t recognize it.”
Melissa looked. A dark sedan with tinted windows, no one visible inside, parked just far enough down the street to be unremarkable. She looked at it for a long moment.
“It’s probably nothing,” she said.
“Probably.” June’s voice was careful. Neither of them believed it.
They stood there, not touching, the space between them charged with everything that had been left unsaid inside.
Melissa thought about David’s voice: they’re building a picture of something.
She thought about the way June had looked in the garden this morning, laughing at a song Melissa didn’t know, alive and young and entirely herself, with no idea anyone might be watching.
“Melissa.” June’s voice was low. “When you get back—”
“When I get back,” Melissa said, “we’re going to have the conversation we keep not having.”
June looked at her. “Okay.”
“I mean it. Not another—” Melissa stopped herself. “Not more of what we’ve been doing. Pretending the edges aren’t there.”
“Okay,” June said again, and her voice had gone soft in a way that made Melissa want to reach for her despite the street, despite the car, despite everything.
She didn’t. But she held June’s gaze long enough that it said something anyway.
Lila came back through the front door at a run, sunglasses held aloft like a trophy, and the moment closed.
Melissa put on her sunglasses, kissed Lila’s forehead, picked up her bag. June stood on the path with her hand on Lila’s shoulder, both of them watching, and Melissa looked back once from the car door.
“Wednesday,” she said.
“We’ll be here,” June said. “Both of us.”
Melissa got in the car. She didn’t look at the sedan as they pulled away. She looked straight ahead, and kept her face still, and told herself she was protecting something worth protecting.
She hoped she was right.