He wasn't going to rescue her.
He had promised not to.
Three months earlier, when Emma first proposed giving up part of the vegetable field for her experiment, Daniel had said:
“If I give you the acre, it's yours.”
Emma had smiled.
“Okay.”
He had pointed at her.
“That also means your mistakes are yours.”
She had stopped smiling.
“I know.”
“No. You know the sentence. That's different.”
He had leaned against the kitchen counter.
“You lose plants, you don't blame weather unless weather did it.”
Emma nodded.
“You get bugs, you don't say the bugs cheated.”
“I won't.”
“And if somebody tells you your idea is stupid?”
Emma had shrugged.
“I prove them wrong.”
Daniel shook his head.
“No.”
Emma frowned.
“Then what?”
“You prove the idea right.”
She remembered that now.
So she let Dalton laugh.
He walked farther along the row.
“What's this?”
He pointed toward a small yellow sticky card.
“Monitoring card.”
“Monitoring what?”
“Insect pressure.”
Dalton looked around at the damaged leaves.
“Emma, sweetheart, you don't need a card.”
He pulled another chewed leaf.
“This is your monitoring system.”
Earl laughed.
Dalton tossed the leaf down.
Then he noticed the marigolds.
His eyebrows rose.
“Oh, you've got flowers too.”
Emma nodded.
“Companion planting.”
Earl looked at Dalton.
“She's building a garden club.”
Dalton smirked.
“I've been growing beans thirty-six years.”
Emma looked at him.
“I know.”
“In those thirty-six years, I have never once seen a beetle stop eating because there was a marigold nearby.”
Emma crouched and adjusted one of the plants.
“They're not for the beetles.”
Dalton folded his arms.
“No?”
“No.”
“What are they for?”
“Predators.”
Earl grinned.
“You keeping coyotes in the beans now?”
Emma looked up.
“Insects.”
The men laughed again.
Dalton shook his head.
“Emma, let me save you some trouble.”
He squatted beside her.
“Bugs eat crop.”
He pointed at the damaged leaves.
“You spray bugs.”
Then he opened his hands.
“Bugs die.”
Emma waited.
“That's farming.”
“No,” she said.
Dalton's eyebrows rose.
“No?”
“That’s one way to farm.”
Earl made a soft sound of amusement.
Dalton stood.
“This is the problem.”
“What problem?”
“You're thirteen.”
Emma said nothing.
“You read something online. Maybe watched a video. Somebody tells you garlic and flowers are going to outsmart insects that have been eating beans since before any of us were born.”
Emma stood slowly.
Dalton continued.
“And because you're smart, you think complicated means better.”
Emma looked past him toward the damaged rows.
“I don't think that.”
“You're doing it.”
Earl pointed toward the bucket.
“You’ve got pepper water.”
Toward the marigolds.
“Flowers.”
Toward the cards.
“Sticky paper.”
Then toward the chewed plants.
“And half a crop.”
Emma looked at him.
“Not half.”
Earl smiled.
“Give it a week.”
That one hurt.
Not because Emma thought he was right.
Because she had been afraid of the same thing every morning for six weeks.
She had not slept well the first night she found cucumber beetles on the outer rows.
The next day there were more.
Then caterpillars.
Then aphids.
She had walked into the kitchen holding one damaged leaf and asked her father:
“What if I lose all of it?”
Daniel had been drinking coffee.
He looked at the leaf.
Then at her.
“Can happen.”
“That’s it?”
“What do you want me to say?”