LITMIR.BIZ

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grinned. “Okay.”

      * * *

      Tomorrow had ended with a battery of tests and a sad prognosis. They’d sent him back home with more medicine and no hope. He’d lasted a few weeks past the diagnosis.

      Michelle’s eyes filled with tears. The loss was still new, raw. She missed her father. She hated being at the mercy of her stepmother, who wanted nothing more than to sell the house and land right out from under Michelle. In fact, she’d already said that as soon as the will went through probate, she was going to do exactly that.

      Michelle had protested. She had several months of school to go. Where would she live?

      That, Roberta had said icily, was no concern of hers. She didn’t care what happened to her stepdaughter. Roberta was young and had a life of her own, and she wasn’t going to spend it smelling cattle and manure. She was going to move in with Bert. He was in between jobs, but the sale of the house and land would keep them for a while. Then they’d go to Las Vegas where she knew people and could make their fortune in the casino.

      Michelle had cocked her head and just stared at her stepmother with a patronizing smile. “Nobody beats the house in Las Vegas,” she said in a soft voice.

      “I’ll beat it,” Roberta snapped. “You don’t know anything about gambling.”

      “I know that sane people avoid it,” she returned.

      Roberta shrugged.

      * * *

      There was only one real-estate agent in Comanche Wells. Michelle called her, nervous and obviously upset.

      “Roberta says she’s selling the house,” she began.

      “Relax.” Betty Mathers laughed. “She has to get the will through probate, and then she has to list the property. The housing market is in the basement right now, sweetie. She’d have to give it away to sell it.”

      “Thanks,” Michelle said huskily. “You don’t know how worried I was....” Her voice broke, and she stopped.

      “There’s no reason to worry,” Betty assured her. “Even if she does leave, you have friends here. Somebody will take the property and make sure you have a place to stay. I’ll do it myself if I have to.”

      Michelle was really crying now. “That’s so kind...!”

      “Michelle, you’ve been a fixture around Jacobs County since you were old enough to walk. You spent summers with your grandparents here and you were always doing things to help them, and other people. You spent the night in the hospital with the Harrises’ little boy when he had to have that emergency appendectomy and wouldn’t let them give you a dime. You baked cakes for the sale that helped Rob Meiner when his house burned. You’re always doing for other people. Don’t think it doesn’t get noticed.” Her voice hardened. “And don’t think we aren’t aware of what your stepmother is up to. She has no friends here, I promise you.”

      Michelle drew in a breath and wiped her eyes. “She thought Daddy was rich.”

      “I see,” came the reply.

      “She hated moving down here. I was never so happy,” she added. “I love Comanche Wells.”

      Betty laughed. “So do I. I moved here from New York City. I like hearing crickets instead of sirens at night.”

      “Me, too.”

      “You stop worrying, okay?” she added. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

      “I will. And thanks.”

      “No thanks necessary.”

      * * *

      Michelle was to remember that conversation the very next day. She got home from school that afternoon and her father’s prized stamp collection was sitting on the coffee table. A tall, distinguished man was handing Roberta a check.

      “It’s a marvelous collection,” the man said.

      “What are you doing?” Michelle exclaimed, dropping her books onto the sofa, as she stared at the man with horror. “You can’t sell Daddy’s stamps! You can’t! It’s the only thing of his I have left that we both shared! I helped him put in those stamps, from the time I was in grammar school!”

      Roberta looked embarrassed. “Now, Michelle, we’ve already discussed this....”

      “We haven’t discussed anything!” she raged, red-faced and weeping. “My father has only been dead three weeks and you’ve already thrown away every single thing he had, even his clothes! You’ve talked about selling the house... I’m still in school—I won’t even have a place to live. And now this! You...you...mercenary gold digger!”

      Roberta tried to smile at the shocked man. “I do apologize for my daughter....”

      “I’m not her daughter! She married my father two years ago. She’s got a boyfriend. She was with him while my father was dying in the hospital!”

      The man stared at Michelle for a long moment, turned to Roberta, snapped the check out of her hands and tore it into shreds.

      “But...we had a deal,” Roberta stammered.

      The man gave her a look that made her move back a step. “Madam, if you were kin to me, I would disown you,” he said harshly. “I have no wish to purchase a collection stolen from a child.”

      “I’ll sue you!” Roberta raged.

      “By all means. Attempt it.”

      He turned to Michelle. “I am very sorry,” he said gently. “For your loss and for the situation in which you find yourself.” He turned to Roberta. “Good day.”

      He walked out.

      Roberta gave him just enough time to get to his car. Then she turned to Michelle and slapped her so hard that her teeth felt as if they’d come loose on that side of her face.

      “You little brat!” she yelled. “He was going to give me five thousand dollars for that stamp collection! It took me weeks to find a buyer!”

      Michelle just stared at her, cold pride crackling around her. She lifted her chin. “Go ahead. Hit me again. And see what happens.”

      Roberta drew back her hand. She meant to do it. The child was a horror. She hated her! But she kept remembering the look that minister had given her. She put her hand down and grabbed her purse.

      “I’m going to see Bert,” she said icily. “And you’ll get no lunch money from me from now on. You can mop floors for your food, for all I care!”

      She stormed out the door, got into her car and roared away.

      Michelle picked up the precious stamp collection and took it into her room. She had a hiding place that, hopefully, Roberta wouldn’t be able to find. There was a loose baseboard in her closet. She pulled it out, slid the stamp book inside and pushed it back into the wall.

      She went to the mirror. Her face looked almost blistered where Roberta had hit her. She didn’t care. She had the stamp collection. It was a memento of happy times when she’d sat on her father’s lap and carefully tucked stamps into place while he taught her about them. If Roberta killed her, she wasn’t giving the stamps up.

      But she was in a hard place, with no real way out. The months until graduation seemed like years. Roberta would make her life a living hell from now on because she’d opposed her. She was so tired of it. Tired of Roberta. Tired of Bert and his innuendoes. Tired of having to be a slave to her stepmother. It seemed so hopeless.

      She thought of her father and started bawling. He was gone. He’d never come back. Roberta would torment her to death. There was nothing left.

      She walked out the front door like a sleepwalker, out to the dirt road that lead past the house. And she sat down in the middle of it—heartbroken and

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