Excerpt from The Driest Season by Meghan Kenny, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Cielle turned left onto the bumpy dirt road to the Mitchells'. Bodie, eighteen and the only son and child, drove the tractor in the field, dust clouds billowing behind him. The diesel exhaust was dense in the humid air. He tipped his hat and waved. Helen knelt on the seat and leaned half out the window and whistled. Cielle pulled on her ankle, and she slid back down.

"I love him," Helen said, smiling, watching Bodie in her side-view mirror.

Cielle pulled up in front of the house. Bodie rode the tractor toward them. Helen went to meet him, and so Cielle knocked on the screen door and went inside. A fan ran on high and turned back and forth. It rippled her blouse like a wave, blew back her hair, and cooled her neck and arms. She breathed heavily, and her chest felt tight and thick, and she thought, A long needle could be stuck right through me and I wouldn't feel a thing.

Mrs. Mitchell walked into the kitchen with laundry in her arms, and laid it in a pile on the table.

"Cielle," she said, "you look hot. Some iced tea?"

Cielle nodded yes, and began folding bath towels.

"Leave that," Mrs. Mitchell said, and handed her a glass. She looked out the screen door and said, "You girls come for Bodie?"

Cielle wanted to say, Daddy is dead, but Bodie and Helen came in, chatting and flirty, their arms touching. Nobody should have to know this, she thought.

"I told Helen they could stay for supper," Bodie said to his mother. "That all right?"

"Of course," Mrs. Mitchell said, and patted her upper lip. "But I'm not baking anything, we'll just have beans and leftover chicken."

The cold drink felt good but Cielle felt light-headed, tired, as if she could lie down on the floor right then and sleep. She needed to tell someone about her father in the barn, her mother in the bath. But she knew to say the words out loud was to change lives instantly, and to throw the world off balance from that moment on. She remembered the barn swallows clucking and flapping high up in the rafters and her father's horse stomping in his stall. The sharp smell of urine. The wheelbarrow in which she'd carried the eggs that morning. Had he stood on it in his last moments? If she had put the wheelbarrow behind the barn, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe if she'd done the birdcall back he would have known she loved him, but that morning her hands smelled of bleach and she didn't want them near her face, near her eyes. Now, at the Mitchells', all she could think of was the sharp smell of bleach on her fingers. Maybe if she didn't say the words Daddy's dead, didn't even think them and stayed at the Mitchells', then by the time they went home she would know it was imagined and her mother would be out of the bath in a cotton dress, and her father would be in for dinner. They would be sitting at the kitchen table eating steak and potatoes, listening to the ball game on the radio.

Mr. Mitchell walked in red-faced and sweaty. He wore a white undershirt tank and dirty pants held up by suspenders. He wiped his face on one of the folded towels and Mrs. Mitchell said, "Honest to God, Jim, not a good, clean towel."

Mr. Mitchell laughed. "Expect me to wipe my face with a dirty towel?"

"Just not a good bath towel," she said, and handed him a glass of iced tea, and he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.

"I'll wash up for my sweetheart," he said, and took a long drink, "just after Miss Cielle here might help me bring in a horse." He winked at Cielle, set his glass down, and held the door open for her.

The Mitchells owned two American quarter horse mares—compact, strong animals. They had English saddles and bridles and let Cielle ride when she wanted. Mrs. Mitchell gave lessons on weekends for extra money but taught Cielle for free.

Cielle walked behind Mr. Mitchell. His steps were heavy and sure in his work boots, and his soles left diamond patterns in the dirt. Cielle stretched her legs to step into his footprints as if they were tracks in the snow. She moved forward awkwardly like a circus clown with a wide, exaggerated walk. She saw him turn his head toward the pasture for the horses, but knew it was for a sideways glance of her behind him, and he smiled and continued on. He smelled like her father after work in the sun—musky and salty and alive.

Excerpted from The Driest Season by Meghan Kenny. Copyright © 2018 by Meghan Kenny. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.