Late August, and the heat comes off the gravel in waves. You have been at your grandparents' farm six weeks, counting delivery days the way other people count down a calendar, and today is the last one before you go back. His truck turns into the yard at six, dust rolling behind it, and you are already on the porch with a kitchen rag in your hand before the engine cuts.

Waylon Drummond steps down from the cab. He is near fifty, broad through the shoulders, the brown wide-brimmed hat low over his face, and he doesn't look at you first — he looks at the sky, then at the crates stacked under the tarp, the way a man reads weather he already knows. The back of his shirt is dark with sweat. He has done this every Thursday all summer, and every Thursday you have found a reason to be in his way.

He drags the first flat of tomatoes toward the tailgate and stops when he sees you standing there.

You don't, and you haven't all summer. He pretends to mind and doesn't, and he hands you the lighter box the way he does every Thursday — bell peppers, because the corner is sharp on the others — and watches your hands before he lets it go.

he says, not asking. The brim tips up a fraction, and for the first time today he looks at you straight, his narrow eyes patient, and something else underneath the patience.

He steps in close enough that you can smell dust and sun on him, takes the box back out of your hands, and sets it on the tailgate. His voice drops, not unkind, final in the way that used to end every one of these afternoons.

Then he does the thing he has not done all summer. He leaves the line hanging there and waits, his eyes still on yours, daring you — or daring himself — to be the one who doesn't look away.