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Adele had advised Harriet to buy the Impala, not the Bel Air. But Harriet’s husband had always bought Bel Airs, and Harriet didn’t want to dishonor Paul’s memory. This meant Harriet’s inferior Bel Air was frequently parked in the Rutledge driveway, with Adele half-hidden beneath its open hood.

Harriet, from her lawn chair in the shade, called out, “See anything?”

“Oil and brake fluid look good. Battery’s fine. A couple of hoses starting to crack—we should replace those. I’ll take a look at the filter next.”

She didn’t like having an audience, but Harriet stuck close to her vehicle, as if Paul Mayes’s spirit resided somewhere inside it. And maybe it did, thought Adele. Paul had grown crotchety and demanding toward the end of his life, not unlike Harriet’s Bel Air.

Harriet sipped her iced tea. George had offered her a magazine too. As if Adele ran a hair salon.

“I had the hardest time choosing between Grotto Blue and Grecian Green, but I think the green was the right choice, don’t you?”

Harriet had asked her this question so often that Adele wondered whether she ought to be driving anything at all.

She had the air filter out now. Harriet might be interested to see how much debris was stuck in it.

She might consider parking someplace other than beneath her crape myrtle.

Adele ducked out from under the hood, straightened to her full height.

The world spun. The Bel Air and the trees and the grass turned orange and fuzzy. She dropped the air filter and crouched down. Her ears buzzed. She lowered her rear end to the concrete and put her head between her bent knees.

“Adele, are you all right? Georgeanne! Georgeanne, come quick!”

George fanned her with a magazine. Harriet pressed the sweating glass of iced tea into her hand.

Adele obediently sipped. She raised her head.

The pecan tree remained in focus. So did George and Harriet.

The cicada buzz in her ears faded. Slowly, ignoring George’s extended hands, Adele pushed herself to standing.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just straightened up too quickly, that’s all.

” George and Harriet cut their eyes at one another.

“Really,” she insisted. “I’m perfectly well. ”

George hovered around her for the rest of the week, pestering her with questions. How did she feel? When had she last eaten? Didn’t she think she ought to call Dr. Fleming?

“It was just an isolated incident. A hot day and I stood up too quickly.” But George kept hovering and asking until Adele snapped at her to stop fussing.

Since she’d learned that Ivy was alive and well, the dark shadows had disappeared from beneath her daughter’s eyes. The household felt lighter, airier. Adele didn’t want to change that. George deserved a long worry-free stretch.

A week later, the cicadas buzzed in her ears again.

Her heart went fluttery. She pressed a hand to her sternum and breathed slowly, in and out, until the buzzing and fluttering subsided.

When it happened later that evening, she did the same.

Her heart misbehaved again the next morning as she brushed her teeth.

This was ridiculous. She’d watched Harriet and Bess Cramer and other women her age grow too fat or too scrawny.

She’d listened to them moan about their blood sugar and their arthritis.

She’d murmured sympathetic responses, all the while taking pride in her own reliable body.

Yes, she’d thickened around the middle, she had the occasional twinge in her right knee, but nothing worth remarking on. Until now.

Suddenly, walking from her car to a store entrance left her winded.

And her ankles! She’d always taken pride in her slim ankles—even when she was pregnant, they’d kept their well-turned shape.

Now they puffed like bread dough, rising over the sides of her shoes.

It was the ankles that did it. Charles had suffered from them too.

Without saying anything to George, she went to see Dr. Fleming.

Her blood pressure was high, he confirmed. Just a little. He’d give her something for that.

“What about my heart?” she asked.

He listened to it again and told her she was likely just overtired.

He prescribed rest. Adele obediently lay down for a nap that afternoon at two.

Not half an hour later, she was up. She had three cars parked in the driveway and customers who expected a quick turnaround.

She didn’t have time for napping. She put on her coverall and walked down the stairs—taking them slowly, trying to trick her body into behaving itself—and felt the flutter again.

The next week, she nearly passed out after sitting up from the creeper. Thankfully, George was out flying. And Harriet wasn’t there to watch her put her head between her knees until the world righted itself. Time to get a second opinion, she decided.

“Rest is the best medicine,” said the doctor in Oklahoma City, “for a woman your age.”

“My late husband had heart trouble,” said Adele. “They gave him digitalis, but there’s probably something better now.”

He patted her knee as if she were a child. “Just rest. Soon you’ll be right as rain.”

She forced herself to nap daily, limited her business to a handful of loyal customers. One season passed into another, and settling down for a nap grew easier—she felt so tired.

She wrote to Ruth and Ivy. Her brave, beautiful granddaughters who’d traveled halfway around the world to a place filled with violence.

Adele had never gone farther from home than the Grand Canyon.

Every afternoon as she drifted off, she thought back to her honeymoon journey with Charles, revisiting those blissful days.

When she woke, she caught the faint dried-cherry hint of his cologne.

As if he’d been in the room with her, watching over her as she slept.

And then one night she dreamed of him. Silhouetted against the purples and reds and golds of the canyon walls.

He took her hand and led her up the trail.

Higher and higher they climbed. The sun rose hot above them.

The colors shimmered and shifted. The reds lightening to pink.

The purples deepening to black. Adele’s chest heaved and ached.

“Almost there,” Charles said, urging her on.

Until at last she crested the rim with a bursting, heart-rending gasp.