Page 109

Something in me stills, and Sunny must notice because he walks around the table under the guise of refilling wine glasses but pauses to squeeze my shoulder.

“Medicine,” my mother continues, obliviously. “Chemistry. Even astrophysics. Her scores were extraordinary.”

“They still are,” Sunny says, with just a hint of bite to his tone. I place my hand on top of his.

“Aptitude doesn’t really work that way, I’m afraid,” my father says. “But I suppose we’ll always wonder if wetlands ecology was sufficiently challenging for her.”

My appetite disappears.

Sunny puts his hand on his hip. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

My father is surprised by the question, and I can’t decide if it’s the question itself or the fact that people rarely question him. “I’m not suggesting it has no value. It’s just that Della had all this enormous potential and to see it be squandered by⁠—”

“We’re proud of you, though, darling,” my mother says. “It’s just that we worry about your lack of ambition.”

Something hot and miserable sticks in the back of my throat. How can I have a doctorate, teach at a university, conduct original research, supervise students, and fight for grants and access and publication space and funding…and yet, still allow my parents to whittle the sum of my accomplishments to nothing?

I remember being eleven and getting ninety-seven percent on a test, and my mother asking me what happened to the other three.

“I don’t lack ambition,” I say. “I want tenure.”

“Yes,” my father says. “But have you considered applying somewhere more prestigious?”

“Somewhere that would take me away from the wetlands I care about most?”

The dishtowel that was over Sunny’s shoulder slices through the air and hits the table with a sharp crack. “Can I ask you two something?” There’s a grumbling menace to his tone.

“Of course,” my mother says, her fingers dancing over the pearls at her neck.

“How the fuck do you not see her?”

Silence. His question is met with complete and utter magnificent silence.

My father sits back. “Excuse me.”

“Sunny,” I whisper. I don’t need him to defend me, but a secret part of me wants him to, even as I want to fight to smooth everything over.

“You sit here talking about her like she’s some disappointing investment you tried,” Sunny shouts. “Like you shoveled all this education into her and yet, she didn’t give you the return you expected.”

My mother attempts to interrupt. “That’s not what we⁠—”

“She’s fucking spectacular.” My heart stops as Sunny points to me. “Look at her. She walks into our most precious ecosystem and sees shit nobody else sees. She can look at a plant ten feet from the waterway and tell you what’s wrong with the fucking water. She can hear through twenty different levels of sound and tell you a pig frog or some shit is mating. She does it because she cares.” Sunny slaps his hand over his chest. “She teaches kids who are probably too hungover to know what day it is. She’s trying to save places humans try every day to destroy. She remembers everything you tell her and makes me want to understand shit I’ve never even thought about understanding. She’s gonna save the goddamn earth you’re walking on, the air you breathe. And you have the audacity to look at her like she fucking failed you. Get the fuck over yourself. Oh, and she’s funny.”

My father’s face hardens. “I think you’ve said enough.”

“I haven’t even gotten started, because if I get started on the boots you gave her for graduation instead of the trips you gave to your sons, it might turn into a fight, and seeing as you’re gonna be my father-in-law one day, whether you like it or not, I suggest we don’t go there.”

“They were high-quality boots,” my mother says.

A sound escapes me, and I realize I’m laughing.

I stand up and throw my arms around Sunny’s neck and hug him for continuing to be the first person to defend me. Ever.

My mother looks appalled, but all I can see is the honesty in Sunny’s eyes that he deep down believes every single word he just said.

“Sorry,” he says quietly.

“Don’t be. You were perfect.”