Chapter Two: The Request for Bread

It's the one person in the world that knows you better than anyone else.

Peeta doesn't ask for things often. Even at five, he hates making people go out of their way for him. Take, for example, his birthday. I always make the boys a cake on their birthdays and, whereas Rye and Leaven insist on everything to the color and texture of the frosting, Peeta will smile up at me and shrug.

"You pick," he'll say. And then Rye and Leaven will shake their heads and laugh at him, call him indecisive. They'll tease him, saying he'll get a pink cake because Mother and Papa wanted a girl and instead they got stuck with him.

So, when he comes into the bakery, dressed in his pajamas and asks to bring a loaf of bread to class, I know it's for something important.

I lift him up on the counter and stare at him, his eyes unwavering from mine. It's early. Delilah's not even up yet and I raise my eyebrows at my youngest son, wondering if he slept at all last night in order to wake up before the sun even rises. He stares at me and I can see the desperation.

"What do you need with a whole loaf of bread?" I ask. I have my hands leaning on the counter on either side of him.

Peeta's smaller than Rye and Leaven were at five. The older two take after me in their builds – tall, long, lanky. They haven't grown into their limbs. Peeta's more like Delilah, smaller and more compact. The comparisons stop there between my youngest and my wife. I recognized this on his first day of school. I saw Hunter Everdeen walk in with his oldest daughter and I pointed her out to Peeta. He had been shocked that her mother would leave me for a miner but then, when I had gone to pick him up while Delilah held things down at the bakery, my little boy jumped in my arms and smiled.

"I know."

I had no idea what he meant. I know? I know what? He smirked, his blue eyes shining, and pointed to Katniss, who was amicably telling Hunter something, her arms flailing and reminding me so much of Bevan with her love of the dramatics.

Peeta heard Rye and Leaven coming near us and he leaned closer to me, whispering in my ear so his brothers wouldn't hear. "She sings like her papa."

I remember groaning. I remember thinking to myself that I had planted these feelings of mine into my son. Then I remember him telling Delilah about the girl with the braids.

"She is Seam trash!" my wife had screamed, towering over Peeta the second he said Katniss's name. "You will stay away from her! Do you hear me?"

That night I had to explain the politics of the district to my five-year-old. I had to tell him that his mother hated the Seam because she thought they were beneath us. I had to tell him that his mother hated Katniss's mother – leaving out the fact that it was because I could never love Delilah like I loved Bevan. I had to tell him to stop crying and stop hanging around Katniss, despite the fact that he had told her they would be best friends.

Rye and Leaven had tried to help me. "She's just a Seam kid anyway," Leaven had hissed. Out of my three boys, he's the most like his mother.

"Yeah, they seem nice now," Rye said softly, although through his twinkling eyes, I could tell he didn't quite believe what he was saying. "Then they turn into savages."

"Like that stupid Hawthorne kid!" Leaven had groaned. "He hates me just because I'm blond and he's not. You're better than her, Peeta. You are. She could live a thousand lifetimes and never deserve your friendship."

Peeta stares at me now like he stared at me then. He looks up at me with the slightest edge of disappointment.

"Seam people are people too," he had said then.

"Katniss's dad got hurt in the mines," he says now.

I sigh and roll my eyes. Of course, he's asking for Katniss. He's barely spoken to her since the first day of school, knowing his mother would skin him alive if he did, but I can tell by the way he looks at her when they leave class each day that he watches her a lot. She's a pretty thing so I can see why he's intrigued. She seems nice too, always surrounded by a group of giggling girls that follow her like she's their leader. She probably is. She's like Hunter – courageous and confident and just a tad bit self-righteous.

I mean, I've only met Hunter once but I'd watched him come and go from Town enough to know what everyone thought of him.

Hunter Everdeen knew what it was like to lose a friend to the Games. Rumors around town were that the Abernathy kid was his best friend, just as Maysilee was Bevan's. They took comfort in the fact that they knew what was going on with the other. They would sit and watch the screens in the square late into the night, making sure Maysilee and Abernathy safely made it through another day. I didn't even realize I was losing her to him until Maysilee died and Abernathy came back changed.

Once Abernathy's family died and our second Victor nearly died with them, Bevan ran to the Seam to comfort Hunter and that was the last I really heard of her. My parents set me up with Delilah trying to quiet the gossip of the Town that she left me for a mining rat. That was that. I thought it was over and I would never have to deal with Bevan and Hunter again.

It would be my luck that Peeta and Katniss are the same age.

I sigh and push a piece of his blond hair out of his eyes. "Papa, she's hungry," he says.

I heard about the accident the other day. Cleat Cartwright had told me that Storm Hawthorne and Shale Lockheart had to drag him out. Being from Town, none of us really knew what that meant as the only times we had ever been in the mines were for our annual school trips when we were kids. Apparently, it wasn't serious enough to kill him, but it was bad enough to keep him out of work. To a mining family, it means disaster. It's almost better if the miner dies – at least they get compensation.

"Okay," I tell him, looking to the three paper bags on the counter. "I'll pack you another roll for lunch – "

"No!" Peeta interrupts and I'm surprised. He's not usually this outspoken. He stares at me, his head shaking back and forth. "She won't take it."

I roll my eyes, knowing that hungry Seam kids will take any food they're given. He hasn't realized this yet. The innocence of childhood. "If she's hungry, she'll take it."

"No!" he insists. "You don't know her! She won't take it. But it was Madge's birthday the other day and she passed out bags of candy to everyone in class. Katniss took one. If I have a loaf I can give some to everyone so it doesn't look like I'm giving it to her."

I think I give my son too little credit. He's obviously come to understand not only the politics of the district but the attitudes toward charity in the Seam. I nod and don't say anything, merely putting a loaf of cranberry bread in his bag, holding my finger to my lips.

"Don't tell Mother."

He smiles and wraps his little arms around me, covering himself in flour. "I won't," he whispers back. "I promise."

I set him down off the counter and tell him to go back to bed but instead he grabs one of the aprons off the hook. It's too big for him, dragging on the ground as he walks toward me and I have to laugh at the sight. He's covered in flour, his apron's too large, but his smile is contagious.

He helps me kneed the dough and I laugh as he turns more and more white with each new dough we work with. By the time Delilah comes down he looks like a ghost with his blue eyes sticking out of flour.

"What are you doing down here?" she asks, standing at the bottom of the stairs with her hands on her hips. Peeta turns away from me on his stool and his face drops. His mother's voice is her angry voice.

She storms toward him and grabs his wrists, flinging him off the stool so he lands with a crash against the counter. "Delilah," I hiss, but today she's not having any of it.

"I have been looking for you all morning!" she screeches, not caring that Peeta's eyes are welling and he's rubbing his hand on his head where it's hit the counter. Rye and Leaven stick their heads out of the stairwell to watch. "And look at you! Covered in flour!"

Then, she turns on me. "He has to go to school!" she hisses.

"I know," I tell her. "He can clean himself off. It won't take long."

She glares at me before pushing Peeta toward Rye and Leaven, who I hadn't been sure she knew were there. "Make sure every ounce of flour is off of him and then walk him to school!" she shouts. When the boys don't do anything, she throws her hands in the air. "Now!"

Rye lifts Peeta into his arms and nearly sprints up the stairs, Leaven right on his tail. When they're gone, safe from whatever is going to happen in the bakery, I turn to Delilah. Her glare is fixated on me and she has her hands on her hips.

I thought having kids would help her. She was always so angry and when we had Rye she did better. She doted on him, enjoyed when he behaved. Then, when Leaven came along, she was a little disappointed he wasn't a girl. She wanted this perfect family – the boy and the girl, the successful business. She wanted what the Donners had. She wanted the perfect little family if she was going to have one at all. When Peeta wasn't a girl she just about flew through the chimney. She had what the town midwife called post-partum depression, but I saw it for what it really was.

She didn't get her way and it made her crankier than ever.

And the fact that Peeta's hung up on Bevan's daughter isn't helping.

"What is this?" she asks, walking away from me and grabbing the paper bag I had placed Peeta's bread in. She turns to glare at me and shakes her head. "No. We are not feeding the Everdeens!"

"It's not for the Everdeens," I tell her. "It's for his class. They're having a party for the first hundred days of school."

I honestly have no idea how long they've been in school for but Delilah would know even less than I would. She doesn't keep up with anything the boys do.

"No," she hisses, shaking her finger at me. "Peeta may be able to lie to you and tell you there's a party but that bread is going to that awful Seam girl! I know it! And if he thinks for a second –"

"Delilah!" I shout. "Give it up! It's not for Katniss!"

She slams the bag on the counter and glares at me. I think for a moment that I've won and then she spits on the bread and walks into the front to open up shop for the day. You can never win against Delilah.

So, what do you think?

As for the names in this chapter: Rye is obviously a type of bread. Leaven comes from 'leavening' which gives bread the ability to rise. Shale is a mineral name. Cleat is a type of shoe.

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