After the calves had all been rounded up, and were in the corral, ready for the morning, when they would have their ear tags
put in, we were all unsaddling our horses.
"That was some good work out there, cowgirl," Adam told me, hanging his saddle on a saddle rack.
"Thanks," I said, as I unbuckled the cinch to Petra's saddle.
"Damn fine," Brian said, in agreement. He gave Guthrie a punch to the shoulder. "Your sister cleaned your clock out
there, boy."
"Don't I know it," Guthrie grumbled good-naturedly.
"Yeah, peanut, way to hustle," Crane added.
"Thanks," I said again.
"And hey," Brian said, "give me back my hat!"
I took off the hat and tossed it to him, letting my hair fall down my back.
"You're gonna need a currycomb for that hair," Adam teased, stopping beside me.
"Oh, man, I wanna do it," Evan said, ambling toward me with one of the horse's brushes in his hand.
Evan went so far as to grab me around the waist, and act as though he was going to actually use the brush on my hair.
At the last moment, he turned me loose. "I couldn't even get a scream out of you," he complained.
"I knew you wouldn't really do it," I said.
"Oh, yeah?" he said, and made a menacing move back toward me.
Comments of how hungry they all were filled the conversation, as they all began heading for the house.
"You comin' in?" Adam asked me, as I dropped back.
"Yeah. After I feed Elwood."
Adam gave me an appraising look. "You okay?" he asked.
"I'm okay."
"You look as though you've been cryin'," he said.
I shrugged, avoiding his eye.
Guthrie, who had stopped, too, stuck his two cents into the conversation.
"She has been cryin'," he verified. "And she's not really okay."
I gave him a silencing glare. It didn't work, because he kept talking. "She's upset."
"What's wrong?" Adam asked, looking from Guthrie back to me.
I rubbed Petra's soft nose, looking at Adam without saying anything.
"She was waitin' for us when we came out of the school building," Guthrie said, quietly.
"Margaret, you mean?" Adam asked, as Brian and Crane stopped beside us to listen, too.
"Margaret. Karissa. Whatever her name is," Guthrie said, his voice full of distain.
"What happened?" Adam asked, looking concerned.
"She's bat shit crazy," Guthrie stated.
"Did you talk to her?" Adam asked me then, and I felt my stomach leap in nerves. Probably he was going to get really mad at me again. Talking
to Karissa after he'd told me not to.
"She just talked to her for a few minutes," Guthrie interjected. "Har wanted to tell her that she couldn't keep that stuff she sent, and all
of that. She was trying to do what you wanted."
I have to hand it to Guthrie. He'd make a great defense lawyer.
Apparently, they thought so, too, because Adam said, "I don't think there's anything wrong with your sister's speech ability. Let her answer
for herself."
He looked at me intently. "Well, Harlie?" he asked.
I couldn't tell much by the tone of his voice. The only thing to do was to stick with my new policy of honesty.
"She was waiting in the parking lot. Guthrie thought we should just drive on, and not stop. But, I thought I should tell her some
of the stuff we talked about."
"Let me guess," Brian said. "She had an entirely different spin on everything than what we said. Right?"
"Pretty much," I admitted.
"That figures," Brian said darkly.
"She was talkin' real mean and spiteful," Guthrie said.
"Her talkin' that way about us is nothing new," Adam said.
"It wasn't just about you guys," Guthrie said. "She was talkin' that way to Har, too."
Adam looked at me even more intently, as if he were looking at my insides from my outside, if that makes sense.
"Was she?" he asked me.
I felt a lump in my throat that made it hard to talk.
I managed a nod.
"That's bullshit," Brian said.
"This has gotten out of hand," Crane said, sounding worried.
"Yeah," Adam said, in agreement, his voice quiet.
We could hear Hannah calling us all in to supper.
"We'll talk after supper," Adam said, in a general way, but he looked at me. "You can feed the goats after you eat, too."
"Okay," I said. I wanted to ask him if he was mad at me for stopping to talk to Karissa. I hung back a little, and waited, and
as he was holding the screen door for me to pass in front of him, I stopped.
"Are you mad at me?" I asked, looking up at him.
"Did you disobey me?" he asked. "Get ahold of her to ask her to meet you at the school? Call her?" he asked me.
"No," I said, wondering what point he was trying to make.
"Then I'm not mad. I'm not gonna blame you for something that she does."
To say I was immensely relieved would be an understatement.
"Okay," I said.
I guess I must have sounded a little subdued, or something, because he leaned down to kiss the top of my head. "It's overwhelming. I know."
My eyes filled with easy tears.
"She said I should give back the photo albums, Adam!" I said, in a rush of words.
He was startled by that, I could see.
"She said that?" he asked. "That she wanted them back?"
"She said since I wasn't going to keep the other things, the bracelet, and the clothes, that I should just give all the pictures back, too." I looked at him miserably.
There was an expression on Adam's face. Full of emotions. Anger. And determination.
"We're not gonna worry about that right now," he told me, his voice even. He reached out to brush my hair back with his hand. "What we're gonna do, right now, is go eat our supper, and then you can do your homework, and we can sit down together, and look at the albums."
"You will?" I asked. Adam's never really liked to look at old pictures, and I've always thought it was because it made him too sad. To look at all the happy, laughing photographs of when life was a lot less complicated for him. And for Brian.
"Yeah. I will. Now, take a deep breath," he ordered.
I took a deep breath as he said, and he smiled at me a little. "Let's go eat supper."
7
Hannah had made a roast, with potatoes and carrots, and an apple crisp. I ate the meat and vegetables, and drank my glass of milk.
She had, as is usual, made me my own dessert. One out of the diabetic cookbook that she had found at a garage sale. This particular one was similar to strawberry shortcake, except she had used blueberries. I'm not really a big fan of blueberries usually, but I appreciated the effort she took to make me feel as though I could still have desserts, too, like everybody else.
So I ate it, and it was really pretty good. And, as usual, Evan and Guthrie ended up eating some of it, too, as well as their share of the apple crisp.
"It's good, Hannah," I told her. "Thank you."
She smiled at me, but her eyes were worried. "Adam says there was a problem, with Karissa."
When I nodded, she reached over to squeeze my hand. "I'm sorry, sweetie."
Since I wasn't on dishwashing duty, and was caught up on homework, I went back outside after supper. I felt Elwood P. Dowd and his two wives, and then went into
the barn, and worked on polishing some more of the tack. I'd finished Evan's saddle, and was working on the one that Ford uses, when
I heard Adam calling me.
I stepped to the door of the barn. "I'm out here!" I called back.
"Come on inside," he said, motioning me towards the house.
"Okay," I said, and went back into the barn, to put all the cleaning stuff away.
When I went up the front porch steps, Adam was waiting for me, holding the screen door open.
"You want to tell me why you're so busy lately workin' on cleaning all the tack?" he asked.
I hadn't realized I'd been so obvious about it. When I looked at him questioningly, he added, "Some of it's startin' to shine." He sounded
as though he was teasing, so I shrugged lightly.
"You noticed, huh?" I asked him.
"Yeah. I noticed. The sparkle almost blinded me."
It was nice to have him teasing me again. It was so nice that I didn't want to say anything to spoil it. But how was I to avoid answering him
about why I was doing the tack?
I stepped on into the living room, and then turned to face him.
"It was kind of needing to be done," I said, stalling for time.
"Uh huh," Adam said drily.
"What was needing to be done?" Crane asked, on his way past us, a glass of tea in his hand.
"The tack," Adam told him, not taking his eyes from my face.
Evan, behind Crane, came to a halt, too, biting into a cookie.
I looked at Evan. Evan looked at me. An unspoken conversation occurred between us.
He nodded at me, just barely.
"Evan asked me to do it," I said, figuring this was it. The final straw. Now they were going to find
out about that night in November when I'd gone to Hell's Bend to a party, where I had been drinking. My ship was going down.
"Yeah?" Adam asked.
I was formulating my words, thinking my day couldn't possibly get any worse. First Karissa, and now this!
I was surprised to hear Evan speak up. "Yeah. I asked her to do it," he affirmed.
He took another bite of his cookie, and then added casually, "It's kind of somethin' between Harlie and me, Adam."
Adam raised his eyebrows, looking a little surprised, but then he said, "Okay. Good enough for me."
And that, thank goodness, was the end of that.
I gave Evan a grateful smile, which he responded to by giving my hair a gentle tug.
I went to take my shower, and when I came back downstairs, in sweatpants, and a t-shirt, everybody was gathering in the living
room, finishing up the apple crisp that was left from supper. I went to get some cheese and crackers for my snack, and found Brian at the stove, busy
making his special hot cocoa.
"Specialty of the house, comin' right up," he told me.
"Yum," I said, in response.
"You gonna have some?" he asked me.
"Uh huh," I said, and went to root around in the refrigerator for the cheese, taking it over to one of the counters, and then going to retrieve the crackers out of the
cabinet.
I turned to find his eyes on me. "You okay?" he asked.
"Yeah." I hesitated. "It was just sort of a shock. For her to get so angry, so quickly like she did."
"I'll bet," he agreed.
I took down a plate, and got a knife, cutting off pieces of cheese to put on my crackers. "She's been really nice to me, Bri. Up until today, I mean."
He looked at me, but didn't say anything, and I had the sudden urge to try to make him understand.
"She seems mostly sad. Kind of like she's at loose ends," I told him.
He still didn't say anything, and so I kept on talking, stacking my cheese and crackers onto the plate. "She got divorced awhile back. I think she's lonely."
I nibbled on a cracker, watching as he poured hot cocoa from the pan into several cups that were setting out.
"I asked her to come here, to the house."
Brian stopped, mid-pour, to give me a horrified look. "You're kidding," he said.
"No. I mean, I would have told you about it first, if she'd agreed to come. But don't worry. She said she wouldn't."
"Oh." He resumed his pouring.
"Then I asked her to call. To talk to Adam. But she said she wouldn't do that, either."
Finished with what he'd been doing, Brian turned to lean against the counter beside the stove. "I'm sorry, peach."
"You don't have to say that you're sorry." I gave him a sad smile. "I know you don't want her to come around."
"Now see, you're only half-right there," he said. "You're right about me not wantin' her to come around. And we've got good reason for feeling that way.
But, you're wrong about me not havin' to say that I'm sorry. Because I am sorry. I'm sorry that she turned on you, and I'm sorry that she won't call, even when she knows it was important to you for her to try."
It was a long speech for Brian, and filled with feelings, which is a bit unusual for him, as well.
"Thanks," I told him, tears filling my eyes.
He reached out to pull me into a tight hug.
"I don't want to give all those pictures back," I said, pressing my cheek against his shirt.
"Adam and I talked about it, and we're glad you have them," he said, not understanding what I was getting at. "I'm sorry I was an ass about it. You don't have to
give them back."
"She said so," I said, and Brian pushed me back a little, so that I was looking up at him.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"She said she wanted them back," I said, feeling the pain of that hit me anew.
"I thought you said she gave all those to you?" he asked.
"I did. I mean, she did say I could keep them when she gave them to me."
"But then, when she didn't get her way, she put on her bitch hat, huh? And she threatened you?" he asked, and there was that deadly quietness to his voice.
The one that suggests that someone is about to face the wrath of Brian McFadden.
I didn't really want him to get all angry. I mean, he already had enough bad feelings about Karissa as it was. I wished that I hadn't brought
it up.
But it's a little like stopping a force of nature, whenever Brian gets that look on his face, or that tone to his voice.
He took hold of my shoulders, and said, sounding fierce, "The pictures are yours. Period. I'll see to it."
I wasn't at all certain what he meant by that. 'I'll see to it'. The words, for sure, had an ominous sound to them.
Then, just as quickly, Brian turned loose of me, and said calmly, "Help me carry all these cups to the living room, will ya, peach?"
7
We all settled in the living room, eating popcorn and drinking Brian's cocoa. I brought the albums of pictures out to share, and a couple of hours
passed quickly, with everybody commenting, and passing pictures back and forth. There were a lot of them that included different poses of the older couple
I'd seen in several pictures when I looked earlier.
Curled up between Guthrie and Brian on the couch, I held a couple of them out to Brian.
"There's nothing written on the back. Do you think these are Mom's grandparents?"
Brian took the pictures and looked them over, passing one of them on to Adam. He looked a little longer at the one in his hand.
"What do you think, Adam? I'd say probably so. Wouldn't you?"
"Yeah. I'd say so," Adam said, in agreement.
"Their names were Joshua and Maxine, right?" Crane asked. "I remember Mom talking about them a couple of times."
"I think so," Brian said.
"He was a pilot in the war, I remember mom saying," Crane said.
Guthrie and I both started asking questions, and paying attention, as Crane talked about what he remembered.
"World War II?" Guthrie asked, looking as though he was thinking.
"World War I," Crane said.
"Wow," Guthrie said.
After that the conversation turned to other stories, and both Guthrie and I, and Evan, too, were surprised to learn that our father had had a pilot license at one time.
"I never knew that," Evan said.
"Where did he fly?" Guthrie asked.
Adam and Brian looked at each other, both obviously trying to remember details of things that they hadn't thought about for years.
"He did some crop dusting," Adam said. "Mostly around here, I think. He took Brian and I up with him a couple of times."
"Wow," Guthrie said, again, obviously impressed. "That must have been awesome."
"Yeah, I liked it," Adam said, and then he chuckled a little. "Brian didn't like it so well, though. Did you, Brian?"
"Keep your comments to yourself, big brother," Brian said, as he continued flipping pages in one of the albums.
"What happened?" Guthrie demanded.
"He was shaking so much that the plane almost flipped over," Adam continued, despite Brian's dark look. "Yelling 'we're going down! we're going down!' over and over, the whole time."
Guthrie and Evan started laughing, and even Clare giggled.
"Our tough brother is afraid to fly?" Evan asked.
"I would have liked to have heard that!" Guthrie hooted in amusement.
"Being blown completely out of proportion," Brian grumbled, good-naturedly. "I don't think I yelled it the entire time, anyway."
Clare leaned down from where she was standing behind the couch to hug Brian around the neck. "It's alright, darlin'. I still love you, even if we can never parachute out
of a plane together."
When it was nearly nine-thirty, Adam said we should look at the pictures some more another evening.
"You kids need to be gettin' to bed," he said.
"Yeah. I'm beat, too," Brian said, with a yawn.
Clare and Hannah started picking up all the cups from the cocoa, and bowls of leftover popcorn, taking them to the kitchen. Guthrie went upstairs to take a shower, and everybody else
began to stack the albums. I was still sitting on the couch, looking at a particular picture of my mom with what seemed to be a much-younger version of Karissa, and their parents. My mother was dressed
in blue jeans, rolled up at the bottom, while Karissa was dressed to the nines in high heels and a dress. The dress was one of those from the late 1950's that had the flouncy skirt.
Crane nudged my foot with the toe of his boot. "Come on, peanut. Help get stuff cleaned up."
"Okay," I said, but I still sat there, studying the picture. There was something about it that puzzled me. Karissa stood off to the side, while my mom was nestled in the middle
between my grandparents.
"Crane, look," I said, holding it up for him to look at.
He took it from me. "Yeah," he said, handing it back. "Mom looks like she's about fifteen or so."
"I don't mean that. Look at how Karissa is standing. Off to the side."
Crane took another look, closer this time. "Yeah. I see."
"In every single picture that she's in, she's standing that way."
Adam paused beside us, and Crane handed the picture off to him.
"It's like she's not a part of the family group," I said.
Adam studied the picture. "Probably she just didn't want her picture taken, or somethin'," he said.
"Right," Crane agreed. "Maybe she was on her way out for a date or something."
"But it's every single photo of her that she's standing that way," I said, again.
"Most girls are moody, like that," Adam said, handing the picture back to me.
"Not me," I denied, and Adam gave me a 'you're kidding' look.
"Oh. Okay," he said, teasing. "Now come on, get stuff put up and get to bed."
7
I was finishing up brushing my teeth, when Adam came to the open door of the bathroom.
"I'm thinkin' things out," he said. "Figuring the best way to handle this whole thing with her."
Her. Karissa. Margaret. KarissaMargaret.
"Okay," I said, wiping my mouth with a towel.
"Do you have a phone number for her?" he asked me.
"She gave me the number to a hotel she was staying at in Modesto," I said.
"She lives in Modesto?" he asked.
"She said she actually lives in Nevada."
"Hmmm. Well, leave the phone number on the desk," he said.
I looked at him in surprise. "You're going to call her?" I asked him. I felt a sudden moment of hopefulness.
"I'm not sure what I'm doing yet. Just leave the number, alright?" he said.
"Okay."
Adam stood there, looking at me a moment longer, as if he was thinking about something.
"If she shows up at school again, or anywhere you're at, I don't want you to stop and talk to her like you did today."
Even though I was really hurt by the way Karissa had treated me that afternoon, I still thought that I might want to talk to her again.
"You said you understood about today, though," I reminded him.
"I do understand. But I don't want you to do it again."
"You mean, if she's trying to talk to me, that I should just ignore her, and walk away?" I asked.
"That's what I mean."
"Well, okay," I said reluctantly.
"I'm not concerned with what's polite, as much as I am about safety for you," Adam said.
"She's not dangerous, or anything like that," I told him.
"Well. I hope that's right. But since I don't know that for certain, I want you to listen to what I'm sayin'," Adam insisted.
"Okay."
"Okay," he echoed. He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. "Goodnight."
"Night," I answered.
At the door of my bedroom, I said, "Adam?" and he turned from the head of the stairs to look back at me.
"Yeah?"
"Is somebody going to drive me to class tomorrow night?" I asked.
Adam tilted his head a little. "Why?"
"I just wondered, is all. I know everybody's pretty busy."
"What you really mean is, is somebody going to drive you, or do you get to drive yourself? Right?" he asked knowingly.
I lifted my shoulders a little, feeling my face turn warm.
"You're grounded, remember?" he said.
"I remember."
"So you think four days into it, that I'm gonna change my mind? Is that it?"
"I wasn't asking you to change your mind," I said quietly. "Not exactly, anyway."
"That's good," Adam said, and raised his eyebrows at me. "Because I might add another week to the grounding. If you were to do that, I mean."
I looked at him, horrified at my mess up. I should have known better than to try to work Adam.
"Sorry," I said.
"Somebody will drive you to class. Alright?"
"Yes, Adam," I said, appropriately subdued.
"Goodnight, sugar," he said, giving me a knowing look.
"Goodnight."
7
