LITMIR.BIZ

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about all she ever does.”

       “Not the same,” Jesse argued coolly. “She had a special outfit for the shindig, and she won a ribbon. She wanted you there, Rance.”

       “Well, you were obviously there,” Rance growled.

       Jesse nodded, showing no signs of backing down. “Cheyenne and I both went. Took her and Rianna to the Roadhouse afterward, for ice cream. Do you know what the worst part was, Rance? Watching that kid try to pretend it didn’t matter that you couldn’t be bothered to show up.”

       The pressurized air seemed to crackle.

       “Hold it, both of you,” Keegan said.

       “I don’t need some poker-playing, bronc-riding womanizer telling me how to raise my daughter,” Rance bit out.

       “You sure as hell need somebody,” Jesse replied, “because you’re not getting it on your own.”

       “Enough,” Keegan insisted. “We’re on a jet, not out behind the barn.”

       Rance sighed angrily and thrust himself back in his seat.

       Jesse turned to look out the window again.

       They were landing outside San Antonio before anybody said another word.

      ON SATURDAY MORNING, three days after her daddy had left town with her uncles, Keegan and Jesse, Rianna McKettrick opened her eyes and lay very still in her twin-size canopy bed at Granny’s place on Zane Gray Road.

       In the bed across from hers, Maeve went on sleeping, breathing softly.

       “I’m seven,” Rianna wanted to say, right out loud. “Last night, when I went to bed, I was only six. Now, this morning, I’m seven.”

       It seemed a wonderful thing, a thing people ought to be told.

       She knew Maeve would just roll her eyes and look at her like she was stupid. It made Rianna sad. The bigger Maeve got, the less she seemed to like her little sister, and try though she might, Rianna couldn’t catch up.

       It took some of the fun out of being seven.

       With a sigh, she sat up, tossed back her covers and slid out of bed. She padded into the bathroom she and Maeve shared when they were at Granny’s, which was just about all the time. She’d heard her daddy say that they all ought to stay out at the ranch house, but Granny didn’t like to be that far from the Curl and Twirl.

       Granny was a businesswoman. She had things to do.

       All grown-up people did, it seemed to Rianna. All the time.

       She washed her hands and headed for the stairs.

       Granny would be down there in the kitchen, listening to the radio and waiting for the coffee to brew. Rianna could smell the familiar aroma already, and that made her sad, too. It reminded her of her daddy. The first thing he did, every morning when they were at home on the ranch, was make coffee.

       Last night, after Granny had tucked her and Maeve in, listened to their prayers and left the room, Rianna had whispered to her sister that she thought Daddy might come to the party, after all. He had that jet to travel in, didn’t he?

       “Forget it,” Maeve had said. “He won’t be there. He’s busy.”

       Remembering, Rianna paused on the stairway, doing her McKettrick-best not to cry. She wished she had a mommy, like the other kids at school.

       She thought of Echo—Miss Wells, Granny said to call her—with her sparkly smile and pretty hair. It would be a fine thing to have a mother like Miss Wells, driving a pink Barbie car, pulling up in front of the elementary school and waiting to see Rianna and Maeve come out the door. Taping their drawings and arithmetic papers to the front of the fridge.

       Rianna’s throat ached, and her eyes burned so bad she couldn’t see for a moment.

       “Rianna, honey?” It was Granny, standing at the bottom of the stairs with the newspaper in one hand, looking up at her. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

       Rianna swallowed hard, summoned up a smile and went the rest of the way down the steps. “I’m seven,” she announced.

       Granny smiled, leaned down and kissed the top of her head. Patted her lightly on one shoulder. “You surely are,” she agreed. “You’re getting to be such a big girl.”

       “Maeve says I’m a dweeb,” Rianna confided solemnly.

       Granny bent a little more and hugged her tight. She smelled of lilacs, just like always. “Don’t you pay too much attention to the things Maeve says,” Granny told her. “She’s growing up, just like you are, and sometimes that’s hard. It makes a person crabby.”

       “Was my mommy ever crabby when she was growing up?” Rianna, unlike Maeve, had no memory of her mother. She wished she had, because then there might not have been a big hole opening up in the middle of her chest when she saw moms hugging their little girls, gathering them up like chicks, loading them into minivans.

       Granny’s face softened. “Oh, yes,” she answered, and her voice sounded kind of funny, like she’d swallowed something and couldn’t quite get it to go all the way down. “Sometimes she was. Mostly, though, she was happy. She was smart and beautiful, too, just like you and Maeve.”

       Rianna had heard those things before, many times, but she never got tired of listening. “How come Daddy isn’t happy?” she asked.

       Granny’s face changed again, but it was different from before. It made Rianna wish she hadn’t asked. Maybe Maeve was right. Maybe she asked too many questions. But how else was she supposed to find things out? It wasn’t as if people told a kid anything much—beyond “Brush your teeth” and “Do your homework—” without a lot of prodding.

       “He works too hard,” Granny said. “And he misses your mama something fierce.”

       “I miss her, too,” Rianna said. Maeve might have mocked her, said she couldn’t miss Mommy because she’d been too young when she died, but Granny seemed to understand.

       “She’d want you to have a real happy birthday,” Granny said.

       Maeve appeared at the top of the stairs, still in her pajamas, rubbing her eyes with the back of one hand. She yawned. “Is breakfast ready?”

       “I’m seven,” Rianna burst out, unable to contain the stupendous news.

       “Big deal,” Maeve said.

       “Maeve McKettrick,” Granny scolded, “if you’re going to be snotty, go back to bed.” She turned to Rianna again and smiled. “Meanwhile,” she went on, “there just might be a pile of presents waiting for you in the kitchen.”

       Rianna’s spirits rose. She liked presents.

       Maeve came grudgingly down the stairs.

       “You think you’re a teenager,” Rianna whispered, waiting until Granny went on into the kitchen, to pay Maeve back a little for thinking it wasn’t important to be seven. For one thing, Rianna reasoned, it was the only way to get from six to eight. “Just because you’re getting braces.”

       “At least I’m not a baby,” Maeve sniffed. “Like you.”

       Rianna clenched her fists at her sides. “I’m not a baby!”

       Granny doubled back. She said she had eyes in the back of her head, and sometimes Rianna believed her. Imagined them peering out through the hard-sprayed fluff of hair.

       “That will be quite enough,” Granny said. “This is a beautiful day, and we’re all going to be nice to one another.”

       There was a big stack of presents by Rianna’s plate, all of them tied up with ribbon, and that took her mind off mean Maeve calling her a baby. She wondered out loud if any of them were from her daddy.

      

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