LITMIR.BIZ

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dummy yourself,” Ellie said, unperturbed. “I wish Gypsy was here,” she added. “Does it hurt to get spayed?”

      “Gypsy’s having a good time at the clinic with all the other dogs,” Dan said. “She’ll be home tomorrow.”

      Josh stumbled on a tuft of grass near the house and whimpered, rubbing his eyes with a dirty hand. Dan picked the little boy up and carried him the rest of the way, wondering if he’d be able to keep his word and find a few minutes the next day to help Chris with her castle.

      He worked from dawn to dark, often eighteen hours at a stretch. In addition to the hay fields, he grew grapes for the McKinney winery, kept bees in rows of wooden hives at the edge of the hay meadow, a small herd of cattle and some pigs and goats, anything he could think of to pay the mortgage and keep his farming operation afloat.

      And with three little kids to look after, his life wasn’t easy. In fact, most of the time it was a waking nightmare.

      Still holding Josh, who nestled drowsily against his father’s shoulder with a thumb jammed into his mouth, Dan followed the two little girls into the house.

      In the kitchen he glanced around and sighed.

      The place looked like a tornado had passed through. No matter how hard he tried, tidiness and order seemed impossible to attain. Toys and clothes littered the floor and the sink was stacked with dirty supper dishes; the girls had fought over whose turn it was to do them. Through the doorway he could see into the sparsely furnished living room and knew how badly it needed dusting.

      There were times when Dan longed fiercely for the simple things, like a clean house and a hot meal on the table when he came in from work, and some peace from kids who seem to squabble all the time.

      Not that he’d ever want to be parted from his children for long. But sometimes he was just so weary.

      He sent Chris into the bathroom to run a tub for herself and Josh, then began to pick up the things scattered about the floor. Ellie surprised him by marching over to the sink and filling it with hot water.

      Something about her rigid back alerted him. He sat down at the table and watched her thoughtfully.

      Ellie’s real name was Danielle, which she hated with such passion that nobody ever dared to use it. Of the three children, she was the only one who looked like their mother, and one day she was going to be a real beauty.

      She had silky black hair with a touch of curl, clipped short around her face, and big brown eyes that could be lively or sullen depending on her mood. In June, just a month after her twelfth birthday, she’d begun her menstrual periods and been appalled by her body’s treachery. It was “gross,” she’d said, and burst into tears.

      Dan had cuddled her tenderly while she cried. He’d shown her books on female reproduction and explained that what was happening to her was not a tragedy but a wondrous thing.

      But her moods were more erratic all the time nowadays, with shifts that left him feeling baffled and hopeless.

      He suspected she might be having a tough time getting along with some of the kids at school, though she refused to talk to him about it. When he spoke to her teachers, they said Ellie was bright but very quiet. None of them were aware of any particular problem.

      At the moment, however, Dan sensed that his daughter’s silence needed to be explored. He sat at the kitchen table, doodling with a blue crayon in one of Chris’s coloring books and considering how to go about it.

      He could hear muffled shouts and laughter from the direction of the bathroom, and winced at the sound of water splashing onto the worn tiles he’d never had time to replace.

      “So,” he said casually, “what’s up, Ellie?”

      She kept her back turned, wiping dishes, rinsing them and stacking them in the plastic rack. “I don’t see why we can’t have a dishwasher,” she muttered. “You should see Aunt Mary’s house now, Daddy. She has two dishwashers. Last month Uncle Bubba gave her another one just for pots and pans.”

      “Good for Mary,” he said mildly. “She’s worked hard all her life, and her ostriches are making a lot of money for them now. She deserves anything Bubba wants to give her. But we can’t afford a dishwasher.”

      “We can’t afford anything,” the girl said. “It’s so stupid, how poor we are.”

      Dan restrained himself from making a sharp reply. She was just a child and couldn’t be expected to understand his financial situation.

      “So what’s going on?” he asked again.

      “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, but he could see the way her thin shoulders stiffened.

      “You’ve been real quiet since we came in from outside. Is something bothering you?”

      “Of course not.” She wiped a plate with unnecessary energy and slammed it into the dish rack. “Except that I have to do stupid Chris’s job for her because she’s too lazy.”

      “You might as well tell me, Ellie,” Dan said reasonably, “because you know I’m going to find out, anyhow. And I might be upset if something happens to catch me by surprise.”

      When she turned around, her boyish face wasn’t defiant, just troubled.

      “Daddy…” She leaned against the counter, one thin brown leg wrapped around the other. Dan could see the bare sole of her foot, dirty and marked with a painful-looking bruise.

      “What, sweetheart?” he asked.

      “If I found something, would it be mine to keep?”

      “I guess it depends on where you found it,” he said after a moment’s thought.

      “I mean, if I found it here on our farm and I knew it didn’t belong to you or Chris and Josh.”

      “So how would it get here?”

      She turned away uneasily and looked out the window while Dan watched her with growing interest.

      “How about if the wind blew it here?” Ellie said, fixing her dark eyes on him again. “Would it be mine if I found it?”

      Dan thought this over, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “If the wind blew something here and you found it, I’d say you were entitled to keep it.”

      She turned back around, relief shining in her face. She reached into the pocket of her shorts, took a bit of paper out and came over to place it on the table in front of him. Dan stared in astonishment.

      It was a wet, crumpled, fifty-dollar bill.

      “I found it in the river,” she said. “Just floating along in the water.”

      “No kidding.” Dan studied the bill, fascinated, then grinned at his daughter. “Let’s get some flashlights and go back out there,” he said. “Maybe there’s more.”

      She laughed, picked up the bill and returned it to her pocket.

      “It’ll have to go into your bank account,” Dan told her. “Unless there’s anything you need to buy. Clothes or something for school.”

      “I don’t want any stupid clothes. Can you put it in the bank for me when you go to town?”

      “Sure,” Dan said. “And if things get real tough,” he added, “I can borrow from you. With fifty dollars in the bank, you’ll be the richest person in the family.”

      She smiled, then turned away and began drying dishes. An uneasy silence fell.

      “So,” Dan said at last, “we haven’t had a chance to talk much since yesterday, Ellie. What happened with Mrs. Graham?”

      Her back stiffened again, and she rubbed a plate without looking at him. “That woman was such an old cow,” she muttered. “And she was mean, Daddy. You should have heard how she yelled at Josh.”

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