Audrey snorted and walked out of her room. Lara could hear her mother’s shoes on the steps followed by Hugo’s frantic scrambling feet behind her. Audrey called from the stairwell, “Come on.”

Lara threw on pants and a gray zippered sweatshirt and pulled her hair into a ponytail, searching for her sunglasses. It was seven in the morning and it would be cold down in the groves, plus the mosquitoes could eat you alive some days. She moved like a zombie down the stairs, grabbing a cup of coffee. Then she headed out to the tractor.

Audrey had her hair in a tight ponytail and was wearing tortoise Wayfarers. She smelled of recently applied mosquito spray and suntan lotion. Starting up the dusty old John Deere, Audrey put it in gear, the old machine’s cadence competing with another, newer tractor in the next field. She steered it down the windy road past the gas wells and into the wooded groves. Lara, with Hugo in her arms, was being pulled behind the tractor on a wagon with empty buckets at their feet.

It had been her grandfather Simon Webster who’d first brought Lara to the wild huckleberry groves, located in the back acres of their farm. He’d shown her the secret hiding place of the lush bushes off the mowed path. The complete opposite of what you’d expect, Simon was a masterful canner and pie maker; he taught Lara how to roll out piecrust, always making cinnamon rolls with the crust scraps. As the road wound past the wells, the house faded from sight. The tractor rumbled and thumped across a wooden bridge over a small spring as they headed into a thick forest. The sun was bright overhead, peeking down occasionally from the canopy of branches above them and shining in patches on Audrey’s gold-colored hair.

The tractor slowed enough for Lara to hop out and walk ahead to investigate the ripeness of the berries. Lara and Audrey each took a giant bucket and headed out, Hugo yapping ahead of them. The sun came down in patches around her, and the stillness was welcome. Once Lara pushed through some dense thickets, the fragrant smell of the ripe dark-purple clusters baking in the sun hit her before she saw the light-green leaves of the bushes. You never knew what condition you’d find the berries in each season, and that was half the anticipation. Had Simon never shown them to her, Lara would have passed by them. Assessing the grove, Lara began plucking the berries, which fell into the basket with heavy thuds.