Crickets and grasshoppers chirped happily in the long grasses beside the road where Danielle Murphy drove. Fields of golden-yellow sunflowers, their round mahogany faces soaking up the bright sun, stretched to a blue horizon. Danny had never seen so many giant flowers all in one place, and they fascinated her.

She slowed the red Trans Am to look, to wonder how she could incorporate the sunflowers into the magazine article she had been commissioned to write. Earth Now used hard-hitting writing, not flowery prose, so the glowing descriptions filling her mind made her grin.

Then, above the serenity of the country sounds, Danny heard a bang. The car lurched, and she saw a cloud of murky black smoke curling from the tail pipe. As the car was still moving, she steered it off the highway into a gravel side road. The engine had died, but she tried it again, just for luck.

Nothing. Dead.

Heat swirled around her as she stepped from the car. The warm wind that rushed through her long brown hair and over the horizontal Minnesota fields accentuated a lack of moisture. Danny licked dry lips, wishing for something to drink. Other days she had brought along a full thermos and a picnic lunch, but this morning, as she planned on arriving at her cousin's house around noon, she had eaten a quick breakfast at the motel coffee shop and decided that if she did need extra sustenance, she could stop at another restaurant. She hadn't stopped and wished she had. Then she wouldn't feel thirsty.

She looked at the car and the trails of smoke dancing, taunting her, into the atmosphere. The Trans Am had never let her down before. Or her brother, the previous owner. Of course, she had never driven it all the way from New York to Minnesota before, either. That might have some bearing on why it broke down. But the mechanic at her local service station had told her that although the car was old, it still had a lot of miles left in it. She'd certainly never have it serviced there again.

The sunflowers seemed to be smiling, as if they found her predicament humorous. Which is fine for you, she thought. All you have to do all day is sunbathe and photosynthesize. I could wilt out here.

Her canvas slip-on shoes crunching over the sand-colored gravel, Danny walked the slight incline to the main road. There was no traffic. That was the beauty of parts of Minnesota ... there wasn't any traffic, especially on roads like this highway south of the Canadian border, that would have led her to her cousin's home if her car had held on for a few more miles.

She returned to the Trans Am and touched the hood cautiously. It burned her fingers. Whether the hood was hot from the sun or from the breakdown, she wasn't sure. Maybe the engine had only overheated. She should try starting the car one more time. Sitting in the seat, she turned the key, her teeth clenched with hope. All she produced was a crunching noise that sounded very ominous.

She stood beside the car, the sun scorching her arms and legs, as she was wearing denim walking shorts and a white sleeveless cotton top. She began to analyze her situation. Her cell phone didn't work out here so she needed a telephone. Cultivated fields meant a farm. A farm meant a house. A house meant a telephone, from where she could phone Doug and Carolyn and let them know of her predicament. She couldn't be far from their house.

She strained her eyes in the brilliant sunshine to a distant clump of trees outlined by a wavering haze of heat. Was there a house behind those trees? Was it worth walking in this heat?

A loud honk broke the pastoral stillness of nature, and Danny winced. Honking horns reminded her of home, the location of her townhouse near a busy intersection. She hadn't realized how much she had been relishing the country silence until that moment.

"Broken down?" a voice drawled from the cab of a dusty, blue pickup.

Danny said, "No. I'm just standing around on the side of the road for my health." Then she smiled, feeling she needed to make an impression because the suntanned face shaded by dark glasses and a green John Deere cap might be the best thing ... if she discounted the sunflowers ... that she would see all day.

The man chuckled. "You're on my property, you know."

"I didn't know that. But when the car began to go wrong, I managed to drive off the road."

"Won't it start?"