When they took the horses back to the stable, Regan's eyes glowed with silent laughter as he took in Trixie's scuffed and dirty clothes.

"How did it go?" he asked with a straight face.

"Perfectly perfect," answered Honey with a wide smile as she swung out of the saddle to the ground.

"Yep," Trixie agreed with a grateful glance at her new friend. Honey was not such a drip after all, maybe. Trixie dismounted in something closer to a fall, nothing like Honey's grace.

Regan took Honey's saddle from her. "I'll put them away this once. I'm getting still getting to know the horses and this stable. Trixie's younger brother was here awhile ago asking for her to come home to lunch. I told him you were out riding and that I'd send you home as soon as you got back."

"Come with me, Honey," said Trixie as she took off running.

Hearing Honey panting behind her, Trixie slowed to a walk when they reached the Belden garden. Honey was holding her side. She gasped a thanks to Trixie, who felt badly. She needed to remember that Honey had been sick. It was hard to think that the accomplished horse rider was the same girl now staggering on the ground.

"Hi, Mama," she called as she opened the front door. She ran to hug her mother, who stood at the opening between the kitchen and the living room. Trixie's heart swelled with pride. Mama was so pretty, in her casual knit suit with the long jacket, her face glowing through her makeup, and her curls fluffed around her head into a halo. She always dressed up to deliver her work, whether for Alana Johnson Graphic Design or Alana Belden of Crabapple Farm.

Trixie continued, "I met the neighbors, and they're not white. This is Honey Weon, and she lives with her Aunt Sunny. And her grandmother, but she's not there yet. Oh, and a man, Mr. Regan, takes care of the horses. So be sure to bring him some food too."

"I will certainly do that," said Alana Belden as she returned Trixie's hug. "Do you think you could be any more rude if you tried, Trixie Belden?" But she was smiling.

Honey put her hand out to shake Alana's hand. "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Belden. And Trixie isn't rude, just accurate. My family is mostly Korean."

"I know Trixie is glad to have someone her age in the neighborhood. Will you have some lunch? Bobby and I ate already, and he's down for a nap. I made an extra sandwich in case my husband came home for lunch, but he didn't. So it works out well."

"Mama, we are so, so hungry," said Trixie. "Hungry like Mart. Horse riding is hard work. Could I make us each another sandwich? And we wanted to have a picnic out in the woods. Okay?"

Alana glanced at Granny's old clock on the fireplace mantle. "Can you be back within the hour? I need to take the produce to town, and I'd rather not take Bobby. Like I said this morning, I'll pay you to look after him."

"Thanks, Mama. We'll be back soon. Here, Honey, you make the sandwiches, and I'll get us some other stuff." Trixie breathed a sigh of relief as her mother left the room. Now she didn't have to work so hard to sneak extra food and cleaning supplies. In a few minutes, Trixie and Honey were back on the bridle path, walking this time with their bags of food, heavy because of all the bottled water Trixie had included.

When they reached the house, they called to Jim, each shushing the other for being too loud. "Voices carry in the country," Trixie said. Eventually Jim came to the window and waved. As he let them in the back door, he said, "I'll have to teach you a bird whistle for a secret signal. But after lunch! This looks great!"

"I could give you my phone," said Trixie as she handed out sandwiches. "It's not much better than a burner phone, and Dad puts only a half hour on it each month. Honey could call you, and you wouldn't have to answer and use minutes. But you'd know we were here."

"Do you have any bars out here?" asked Honey, checking her wrist tablet after she gave Jim a bottle of water.

Trixie pulled out her phone and frowned. "Nope. Oh well. It was an idea anyway. Guess we'll learn bird calls. Jim, here's some grapes from our vines."

"It's so exciting to see where your food grows," said Honey before she bit into a purple grape and savored it.

Jim and Trixie exchanged grins at the city girl who'd never seen food grow. Jim looked down at his sandwich. "This looks like really good bread. But what's the meat? Jews don't eat pork."

"The bread is 7-grain whole natural barely processed whatever," said Trixie. "It's tough as carpet but supposed to be good for you. The meat is bologna, Bobby's favorite. He calls it bloney."

Jim looked at it for a second or two. "Who knows what's in that? Better not to know, even if you're not a Jew. And the Torah teaches that it would be wrong to starve."

"You know a lot about being Jewish," said Trixie.

"Well, I am Jewish." A trace of his scowl came back.

"Doesn't mean you know about it," Trixie replied. "My friend Jessica is Jewish, and she didn't know anything. Year before last, she told me she dreaded the start of school, because every year, the teachers ask her to talk about Jewish New Year, because our school's all diverse and everything. Just about every Friday we celebrated somebody's holiday. My favorite was Holi, the festival of color, in the spring. For Hindus, I think. We all wore old clothes and threw paintball paint all over each other. Now why can't Methodists have a cool holiday like that?"

"Your school sounds wonderful," said Honey, awed.

"It was." Trixie swallowed hard, missing it and her friends. "Anyway, I told Jessica to check out a kiddie book from the library about Judaism—they had series like 'Religions of the World'—then she'd know enough to get by. She made me check it out, because it was too embarrassing to be a Jew checking out a book about Judaism. So she gave a nice little speech in class about apples and honey, starting over, and atonement, and she was a lot happier. But then she lost the book, and I had to tell Mama, and she said I'd just have save my allowance for weeks to pay for it. And then Jessica found the book, and Mama said I could keep it because I'd paid for it. I meant to take it back and get my money, but then we moved. So now I know about Judaism too, and you know even more than that book, Jim."

He grinned. "More than a kiddie book? My mom would hope so."

"You don't have to eat the bologna, Jim. You can have half of my peanut butter sandwich," Honey offered.

But Jim had made most of the bologna sandwich disappear. "Sure. For my next one."

"Organic almond butter," corrected Trixie. "If you care."

"No," said Jim. "Not a bit. And this water is great! You wouldn't believe what the water from the tap tastes like."

"Oh wouldn't I?" Trixie retorted. "Like I didn't drink the same stuff from my grandmother's faucet every summer of my life? Mama used to bring water flavors to make it better, but I could still taste the gunk. It's better in our new house, with new pipes and filters and everything."

"Thanks for bringing all these bottles. And the extra chips, cupcakes, and fruit."

"We'll get you some more," said Honey. She handed Jim half her sandwich. "But Trixie didn't want her mother to miss anything. I'll bring some when we get food in our kitchen."

Trixie wanted her whole sandwich, but she gave Jim half, like Honey had. After all, she could get more at home.

Jim flushed bright red under his light oak-colored skin. "You guys are great. But I can't just keep taking your food. That's not right."

"We're going to figure out a way for you to ride Honey's horses," said Trixie. "And you can help me with the farm. You can come over when Mama takes our produce to Aunt Alicia's store, if she takes my little brother for speech therapy. We don't want him to know. He can't keep a 'see-crud' for anything."

Jim laughed. "So I run away halfway across the state to get away from a farm and end up working on a farm. That's justice for you."

Trixie grinned back. "Okay, you can clean my room and dust for me instead. Now that I think of it—"

Like lightening, Jim fell serious. "Just joking. It never was about the farm work. It was Jonesy. When my dad was alive…"

Honey stepped into the sad silence. "Why don't you teach us that bird whistle, Jim?"

With a grateful look at her, Jim demonstrated a bobwhite's call. "Just like it sounds: bob-white!"

In a few minutes, the girls could make the sound almost as good as his.

"Terrific! Now we can signal each other even if we're with other people. I think bobwhite is going to be very important to us," said Trixie with a satisfied grin.