TESS MATA STOOD BENEATH the brown awning and threw a yellow softball at the white box that her father had spray-painted on a sugar maple tree. Tess hated practicing out here in the backyard. Every time she missed, she had to chase the ball and walk back to beneath the awning, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her sweaty nose before the next pitch. Do that routine a few times in the heat and humidity of South Texas, and you'd hate it, too.
"It's too hot," Tess finally complained. And so she went inside, got on her knees and whipped a tennis ball against the chimney wall, until one of her pitches strayed.