Rhizobia
- After all of the paperwork at Mr. Armistead's office is finished, Taylor drives Esperanza and Estevan to the Pottawatomie Presbyterian Church of St. Michael and All Angels—the new safe-house where they will be staying.
- After they arrive and get everything unpacked, Taylor wakes Turtle so that she can say goodbye.
- Taylor says a painful goodbye to Estevan, and then they all part ways for good.
- Down the highway, Taylor stops at a Shell station to phone her Mama. She tells her that she's just lost somebody she loved. The two have a good long chat about life and love. Isn't that what you talk about in your gas station stops?
- Before she hangs up, Taylor tells her Mama that Turtle is now her legally-adopted daughter. How lovely to be a legal grandma.
- Taylor and Turtle have to wait for some final pieces of paperwork to be processed before they can leave Oklahoma City. What better way to kill time than going to the library? Almost-legal mama and daughter sit in the reference section and read the Horticultural Encyclopedia.
- Turtle points out a picture of wisteria vines—which she still calls "bean trees"—and Taylor reads the caption to her. This is not a title that you have to guess at.
- Together, they learn that wisteria vines can "thrive in poor soil," and it's all because of rhizobia: "microscopic bugs that live underground in little knots on the roots," and "suck nitrogen gas right out of the soil and turn it into fertilizer for the plant" (17.137). Weird. But kind of cool, especially if you think of it as a metaphor for their lives: coming from somewhere tough, but figuring out how to get by.
- Later, Taylor phones Lou Ann from an office where she and Turtle wait to pick up the final bits of adoption paperwork.
- Lou Ann catches Taylor up on the news from Tucson, and Taylor tells Lou Ann that the adoption has gone through. Woo-hoo!
- Adoption papers in hand. Back on the road again. Taylor and Turtle begin the long drive home to Tucson, and that's how we leave 'em.
- What's the next bud on their bean tree? That's up to you to imagine. At least until you pick up the sequel.