My mother had been gone for two weeks when my father announced out of the blue that we would be flying to the Midwest to join her at her work site, so that we could celebrate my birthday together. I was shocked, for several reasons. First, my father and I were a tight little nugget of family, forged as a result of my mother’s dizzy swoops in and out of our lives. Second, my mother did not like to be bothered when she was working. Third, my dad didn’t believe in pulling me out of school for doctors’ appointments or routine dental visits, much less last-minute vacations.

I should point out that I did not like surprises. Above my bed was a color-coded calendar that reminded me I had piano lessons on Tuesdays and dance on Fridays and that every Thursday night I had to have my spelling test signed so I could return it to my teacher the next day. I was that rare child who never had to be told to pick up in her room. I liked things in their places, which was maybe why it bothered me so much that my mother never seemed to be in hers.

Almost as soon as we left the airport in Oklahoma City in our rental car, we saw evidence of the drought: fields scorched black from brush fires, soil as parched and cracked as the throat of a man in a desert. The deeper we drove into the country, the worse it got: farms with foreclosure signs, heifers with ribs that pushed against their hide.

According to the sign at the town limits of Ochelata, there were 424 residents, and not much else. There was a Walmart distribution center within driving distance, which provided employment, and a slightly bigger town—Bartlesville—which had a motel or two.

My father turned right at a sign that said NEXT OF INN, 2 MILES. “Well, Diana Banana,” he said, his pet name for me, “looks like we made it.” We chugged down a dirt road, dust flying up around the car. A small gazebo rose from a dusty lawn. At the end of the drive was a small farmhouse with a screen door and a few ceramic pots of geraniums lining the porch railing. As my father got out of the car, the door opened and a woman stepped out of the 1950s. Her hair was curled in twin rolls on either side of her head, her feet grounded in sensible shoes, her apron covering a worn blue dress. She had one of those faces that might have been thirty or three hundred. “You lost?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Actually, no,” my father said, giving his most charming smile, the one with both dimples that I had inherited.

“Well, I don’t have any vacancy. There’s a motel if you head—”