"Hurry up, gal! The sun is setting!"
Evie glanced up at her stepfather, and fighting the urge to lash out, she nodded obediently instead, all the while thinking, if you hadn't slept half the day away, recovering from the obscene amount of whiskey you indulged last night, we wouldn't be behind. But she knew better. She knew not to speak out or her poor mother would suffer for her defiance.
Wrapping a bloody strand of burlap around her wounded fingers, the young woman swung the rusty sickle, slicing into the dense hay. Sweat glistened her sun freckled cheeks. She had been at it all morning, even while her alcoholic stepfather had slept.
Glancing to her right, she grimaced. Spotting her nine year old brother, sun burnt and weary, and on his hands and knees picking up hay, she forgot her own torment. "You are doing a fine job, Justice," she praised.
Blushing back a strand of perspired-drenched curls, the little boy smiled. Evie felt her heart roil. No matter how wretched and fatigue Justice was, he never complained. Like their departed father, he had been blessed with fortitude. He was her inspiration. But little did she know she was Justice's inspiration as well. They were two of a kind. Both fighters.
"Let's make a game of it! Let's see if we can beat yesterday's yield by nightfall!"
Sparked by his sister's enticing words, Justice lit into a working frenzy, laughing all the while.
Jameson, the children's stepfather, shook his head at their foolishness. There was nothing fun about working. And there was nothing fun about children, which was why he had abandoned his three, alone with their mother, back in St. Louis.