“We’ll be joining one of your guests,” he said, holding out his hand. “I believe my wife has already checked in.”

As if he’d conjured her, a rusty blue Jeep zoomed into the yard, parking behind our rental car. The driver was a man in his late fifties, with an explosion of white hair and camouflage pants and a T-shirt that said MISTER TWISTER. My mother got out of the passenger seat, a camera looped around her neck.

“Mom!” I cried, and I raced across the desiccated lawn to throw my arms around her waist. She caught me the way you catch the flu—squarely, and with a flutter of resignation.

Over my head, a whole novel was being written without words. My father smiled at her. “Surprise,” he said.

•

The owner of the Next of Inn was Mrs. Evans. While my mother took my father up to our room to drop off our suitcases and to make up the cot that had grudgingly been pulled in for me, Mrs. Evans got me a glass of milk and a chocolate chip cookie that was still warm from the oven. “Shouldn’t you be in school?” she asked. As she handed me a napkin, she peered at me like I was a bug she found in her coffee.

I nodded. “It’s my birthday this week.”

“Don’t expect a discount,” she said. She was scrubbing viciously at a frying pan with a sponge that looked like it was made of chain mail. “What do you think of Oklahoma?”

I’d only been here a couple of hours. “It is shaped like a pan,” I said.

“You’re from New York,” she said, and I gasped, thinking she was psychic until I remembered my mother would have told her this at check-in. “New York looks like a sea lion.”

Well, she wasn’t wrong.

“My mom came here for the rain.”

“Hmph. That could take a while.”

Upstairs, we heard voices being raised. Mrs. Evans looked at me, and for the first time, her eyes softened. She took an apple from the counter and handed it to me. “Why don’t you take this outside to nitpick?” she said.

I wiped my mouth with the cloth napkin and wandered into the front yard. I didn’t know if this was a Midwest thing—if nitpicking was some local way of peeling an apple, maybe. Then I realized that I was not alone. On the porch was the man who’d been in the driver’s seat of the car that carried my mother. He squinted at me. “You looking for something?”

I frowned at the apple in my hand, turning Mrs. Evans’s words over in my head, and then brightening with a conclusion. “Are you Nitpick?”

He laughed. “I am not,” he said. “I’m Vietnam Tim.”

“Oh. Okay.” I hesitated. “I’m Diana. My mom probably told you about me.”