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It was on one of those oppressively sticky July evenings in Virginia, when the windows fog up from the humidity and the air constantly licks your skin, that Franny’s parents had first learned about their eleven-year-old daughter’s art project.
For most of the evening, Franny had been inside while her parents sat on their wraparound screened-in porch, the fireflies out in all their blazing glory, the crickets making their fair share of racket.
Mom flipped through a Home and Garden magazine while Dad did what he normally did on the porch. He sucked on a vape pen and sipped a tall sweaty glass of homemade iced tea while marveling at the giant, moss-covered Southern live oak in the front yard.
The tree had been a major reason they’d purchased the refurbished colonial home a coupl
