"Mom, I'll just die stuck out here all by myself all summer," complained Trixie Belden as she twisted another tomato off the vine. She could feel sweat trickle from under her wide-circle brim sun hat, down through her black curls, down her neck. She was going to be soaked before the morning was over.

Her mother pushed back her own hat and drawled, "Why, Trixie, you must be a cat with nine lives, as many times as I've heard you say that. Bobby, don't run off now."

Six-year-old Bobby called from a few rows over, "I'm hiding in the bean teepee. It's cool in here."

"All right. But don't take off your clothes, and don't go any further."

Trixie sighed, wishing she were still small enough to fit in the space made by the bean vines tied to a pole. "If I had a horse, then I could go where I want."

"I seem to remember you saying the same thing about a new bike a few years ago. Which is in the garage. Bobby, honey, that's a flower, not a weed," said Alana Johnson Belden, shifting her basket of okra to her other hip.

Trixie was glad her mother was picking the okra. She hated its prickly fuzz. Mama was determined to turn the old Johnson place into a profitable organic farm, and while Trixie thought it sounded nice to take care of the land and avoid poisons, she hadn't counted on it being so hard. With her older brothers Brian and Mart gone to be counselors at summer camp near their old home near Chicago, Trixie found herself working harder than ever.

"Mama, that's a city bike. The roads out here are too rough, when they're not gravel, which is impossible."

Her mother wiped sweat off her dark bronze skin. "Well, Trixie, if you want a horse, you'll have to earn the money to buy it. And feed it."

Trixie sighed. She wished her skin was as dark as her mother's. She scowled at Reddy, the family's Irish Setter. He lay on the shaded front porch, panting. It sounded to Trixie like laughter. She answered her mother, "How? You wouldn't let me try to get a job. Maybe I could have been a waitress. Wimpy's hires middle school kids."

"You're thirteen, Trixie. The only middle schoolers working at Wimpy's are family members, Miss Luann's grandchildren. Next year, when you're fourteen, you have a chance of getting a job outside of a family business. If you want to work this year, Aunt Alicia will pay you to work in her shop, as many hours as the law allows."

Trixie turned pale under her tawny skin. "Oh, Mama, no."

"I guess you don't want a horse so much after all."

"I do! But don't make me go to Aunt Alicia's today, not after all morning in the field. She's a slave driver!"

Alana smiled as she crossed to another row of okra. It was growing waist-high, reminding Trixie of little palm trees. "I do remember saying something like that when I was your age. I always thought my big sister wasn't so much against slavery as she thought the wrong people were made slaves."

"Like not her but everybody else?"

" Pretty much, child, pretty much."

Trixie loved the way her mother's speech slipped from her crisp, professional "Alana Johnson Graphic Design" that Trixie had heard all her life to the lilting Louisiana accent of Alana's birth. Since Granny died and they moved to her farm near Sleepyside, Mama's voice wobbled from one to the other. Mart had pointed out that it was unfair, that it was okay for her to sound like a Southern Mammy when she and Dad wouldn't put up with street talk from the kids. That got Mart grounded, like his smart mouth always did, and a long lecture for all of them about the difference between accent and dialect and cultural perception. Trixie didn't understand most of the words, but she got the message. It explained why Dad never tried to erase the British traces from his speech that he'd learned in his native Ethiopia. And for days afterward, Mama sounded consistently like her professional self. But Trixie loved her mother's sing-song Southern voice, most likely to come out when talking with Aunt Alicia and other people she'd grown up with in Sleepyside. It reminded Trixie of Granny.

Mama stood straight and gazed out over Crabapple Farm, maybe all the way to Glen Road, to the piney woods on the other side, or something else entirely. "Brian and Mart are going to share the money from their pumpkin patch if you take care of it while they're away, and I've been wanting to put in some flowers. If you think you could handle it, you could put in maybe an eighth of an acre of marigolds and some other flowers that would bloom in October. People who come for pumpkins might want flowers for All Saints Day. Orange marigolds for the home altar are a big tradition among Hispanics."

"Mama, this town is bleached white," objected Trixie. "Who's going to buy Hispanic flowers?"

"For the little field you'd have, the two Mexican restaurants, the Catholic church, and Marisol Lynch might buy all of them. And they'd let their friends in nearby towns know. You could find yourself with a growing business."

"Yes, Mama, I've heard the farm lecture before. People will come from miles around, as far as Monroe, as far as Ruston, even Shreveport to buy our high-quality organic produce and walk through our pretty fields, probably stomping our plants."

"Enough of your sass, girl. You either do it or not. If not, I'll do it another year when I have the time, and I'll keep the money."

Trixie sighed. "Okay, Mama. I'd rather do that than work for Aunt Alicia."

"You can do both. We'll look at seed catalogs after lunch. Maybe you could get a late crop of sunflowers and gladiolas too. Everyone likes those. Put the sunflowers by the road…short ones, so people can see over them."

"I like the big ones best. It could be like a flower forest. Kids would like to explore it. Maybe I could plant a maze." Despite herself, Trixie was interested. Mart loved farming, Brian took part because he was the Good Boy, Bobby liked doing anything outdoors and was more of a pest than a help at his age, but Trixie liked the results more than the day-to-day duties. Still, her own money and her own patch of land excited her. "But all this earning money seems to be about work. Why can't I earn interest, like at Dad's credit union?"

"First you've got to have money to get interest, and at today's interest rates, you'd be a very old lady before you got your horse." Alana glanced behind her, at the mostly finished house, gleaming and new, in front of the older, smaller house that had been Granny's. "Trixie, honey, I'm sorry we couldn't send you to camp this year. We just couldn't afford one more thing. I hope next year all of you can go to camp, and we can sponsor some workers from Mexico, if no one around here wants a job. All we can do this year is hire some part-time teenagers, if you know anyone who wants to work on a farm. Brian and Mart couldn't go to camp if they weren't being paid as counselors."

"Mama, only you and Mart like digging in the dirt in the noonday sun. I don't know anybody from school who would do it, no matter what you paid them. Brian and Mart asked around their classes and the church group before school was out." Trixie decided she didn't need to tell Mama that kids called the Beldens "sharecroppers."

She knew Dad had to take a pay cut to work in a local credit union instead of a Chicago bank when Mama wanted to move back to the town where she grew up. And building a house, getting the farm established, and so many unexpected expenses took up a lot of that reduced salary. Mama had asked why they couldn't just get a bigger loan, and Dad had talked about compound interest and debt ratios, with the bottom line being he wasn't going to have his family drown in debt. Trixie felt like Mama did, but Dad must know about money. It was his job. And Trixie couldn't ask questions because she wasn't supposed to hear that conversation. But if people were going to talk loud, they had to expect to be overheard.

"It's okay, Mama. I understand," she said. She did, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

Mama continued, "I know you're lonely this far out of town. But you used to played with Diana Lynch when we visited Granny in the summers, and the Lynches don't live very far from here now."

Trixie made a face. "Oh, Mama! Ever since her dad won the lottery, she's been so stuck up. I thought we'd be best friends after I moved here, but she didn't even want to talk to me. She didn't even have a birthday party last summer. The kids at school were hoping she'd invite us all to swim in her new pool, but she didn't. I was glad I wasn't in her class this year."

Alana smiled to herself. "Her mother did the same to me, snubbing me after all those years when she did your Granny's hair. And mine. But I kept calling and I invited her to lunch with me paying, I said. She told me how hard it's been since they won all that money. Everyone wants to be her best friend, when before she was barely good enough to fix their hair. And all the relatives they've discovered! So here's what you're going to do: You're going to invite Diana to go to the Monroe Mall for her birthday, like you did all those summers when you were little, and make it clear that food, bling, and movie are your treat, which I will pay for."

"You gave us each a dollar to spend at Claire's when we were little."

"I will adjust the amount for inflation and your advanced age."

Trixie thought about it. "Okay. If she says no, can I still go?"

"You may, for having done your Christian duty, which just might give you something you want. So you have to ask her like you really want her to go."

Trixie sighed, just for show. She'd enjoyed playing with Diana at Mrs. Lynch's beauty parlor, where Granny and Mama went once in a week to have their hair done for church. Trixie and Diana sat on the floor in the back of the shop with their crayons and coloring books, until Mr. Lynch came in at lunch, bringing sandwiches for his wife and daughter and Trixie, if he knew she was there. Sometimes Mama would give them money for Wimpy's, so as not to be beholden all the time. Mr. Lynch would take them to the town square to eat. He was a loud, happy man, his musical voice strange for North Louisiana— different from Mama's because he was a Cajun from south of New Orleans. Everyone called him Eddie, but his real name was Edouard, not Edward or Edwin. He called everyone "cher" or "cherie" and called himself a landscape architect. Aunt Alicia said he was a glorified lawn boy, which was typical of Aunt Alicia.

"Does Mrs. Lynch still have her beauty parlor?" asked Trixie. She had fond memories of the beauty parlor with its strange smells, maybe because they were connected to treats in her mind. Diana thought they stank, and her favorite birthday gift from Trixie had been a set of scented markers.

"No, she sold it when they won the lottery. She was having a hard time with her twin boys, and she was pregnant again. So she went home to rest. Then she had twins again! I can't imagine it, all those babies! Eddie Lynch went to see Peter at the credit union when we moved here, and Peter was impressed with his good sense. They'll be just fine, not one of those families that spend all their winnings and go back to poverty."

Mama's phone rang at that point. She shouted "Hello" while she set her basket of okra down. Then she took off running, trying to find a better connection point and still shouting "Hello!" Bobby ran after her and screamed, "Is it Daddy? Can I talk? I talk real good now cuz I go to speech there-pea."

Trixie gave up trying to hear Mama's end of the conversation. Bobby wouldn't be quiet until Mama handed him the phone. She looked up and down Glen Road. The first visit to Granny that she remembered was when she was four. She stood almost exactly in this same place, looking up and down the road, and asking Granny, "Where are all the cars?" The adults thought she was cute. And nine years later, she could ask the same question. Bobby was the loudest thing on Crabapple Farm.

To the west was a mansion called Manor House. Next door at Crabapple Farm meant a city block or two away, instead of so close you could reach out your bathroom window and touch your neighbor's house. Well, you could if you leaned way out. She and Mart had tried it, back in their old home in Chicago. The Manor House had been empty ever since she could remember. To the east, on a hill, was another big house called Ten Acres. She could barely see its top over the pine trees, but she knew it looked emptier than Manor House, with paint peeling and dirty windows. An old man named Mr. Frayne lived there, and the Belden children had learned long ago to stay away from him and his house. Trixie thought sadly of her best friend Kavi, who lived on the same block of their Chicago suburb, and all the other friends in that neighborhood. Before moving to Louisiana, Trixie couldn't imagine a day without her friends, unless she was sick. It didn't seem likely that she'd ever have a friend next door on Glen Road.

She moved on to the next row of tomatoes, the tiny cherry ones. She picked up a new basket. Big tomatoes got heavy quickly. On the other hand, it would take a lot of cherry tomatoes to fill up a basket. She hoped it would be time for lunch soon. The day was getting hotter and stickier with humidity from the nearby rivers and lakes. She grasped a rotten tomato, squirting its nasty juice all over her hand. She frowned and rubbed her hand dry on her jeans.

"Daddy! Daddy! I'm holping Mommy in the dargen!" Bobby had the phone now.

"Tell Daddy all about your day," Mama called over her shoulder as she approached Trixie.

When talking about her husband, she always said "Daddy" to Bobby and "Peter" to her older children, even though they all called him "Dad." It wasn't like she and Mart even remembered their real father, Trixie thought. Biological father, she corrected herself, like Mart would have. Peter Belden was as real as anything, and she couldn't imagine a better father.

"Trixie," said Mama, with her worry-frown. "Peter says that when he was driving to work this morning, he saw an ambulance in front of Ten Acres. He waited until he got to work to call the hospital to see how old Mr. Frayne was doing, and they told him that Mr. Frayne had pneumonia, besides being very malnourished. They wanted Peter to help find family, but of course he didn't know, and he wondered if I did. But the odd thing was that the hospital thought Peter was the neighbor who called the ambulance. It wasn't him, and there's nobody in Manor House. So who could it be?

"A mystery!" Trixie's eyes sparkled.