“Papa, I have to talk to you!”
“So do I, Papa.”
“And so do I.” The exclamation points again.
“I figured. Can all this talking wait until I’ve had my supper?” Interpreting the collective silence as a yes, he ladled stew and noodles and a thick, rich gravy into a deep bowl. By rights, Angie should have served him as good wives did. But one glance at her arms clamped tightly across her breast, her pinched mouth and scowling eyes, and he’d known she wasn’t going to be doing any serving tonight. He sliced some bread, then carried his supper to the table.
Three grim faces watched him flick a napkin across his lap and salt his stew. Watched him spread butter across his bread. Watched him sink a spoon into the thick gravy. When he swallowed his first bite, his audience intently watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down.
He lowered his fork and suppressed a sigh. “All right. Who’s first?”
“We are,” Lucy insisted, shooting Angie a glare.
Daisy gazed up at him with solemn gray eyes. “We’re innocent, Papa.” She sounded suspiciously more like Lucy than herself.
“Do we have to talk in front of her?”
Angie unclamped one of her arms long enough to make a sweeping dismissive gesture. “I’m not budging. If you want privacy, you’ll have to go outside.”
The girls shoved away from the table.
April evenings were warm in some parts of the country, but not at an altitude of 9,500 feet. On the other hand, the cold night air would tend to limit the length of these talks, and Sam could get back to his stew and noodles sooner. Angie hadn’t given herself enough credit. She could cook. He could forgive a lot in a woman who was beautiful and who could cook.
“Get your shawls, girls.” Reluctantly he traded his napkin for a heavy denim jacket and opened the back door. Having learned a thing or two, he chose the top step and let the girls sit on the next step down. That way, when they turned to present their case, their faces would be illuminated by the lantern light spilling out of the doorway behind him.
“She started right out bossing us around!” Lucy began, indignation flashing in her eyes.
What Sam didn’t understand was how his daughters began the day as proper, neat young ladies and ended the same day by looking like homeless street urchins who lived in a packing box. He’d always assumed that girl children emerged from the cradle with a deep abhorrence of stained, untidy clothing and mussed hair. But his daughters were never happier than when playing in the dirt with their skirts and tresses in a dusty tangle.
“The very minute we got home from school, she ordered us to make our bed and clean our room!”
“Is that what this upset is all about?” His shoulders relaxed. “I would have instructed you to make your bed and keep up your room myself except you’ve had so many other chores. But now that we have Angie to share the load, I think you should make your bed in the mornings.”
“He’s siding with her,” Lucy said sadly. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Sam ground his teeth together. “Well? Did you make your bed when Angie told you?”
“We’ll do it from now on since you say we have to, but we don’t take orders from her. Isn’t that right, Daisy?”
“That’s right. Angie’s not our mama, she can’t order us around.”
“If all she did was ask you to make your bed and clean your room . . . that doesn’t sound like an excessive amount of ordering you around. You should have done it. Did you do your regular chores?”
“We couldn’t dust because she had noodles hanging on everything. We didn’t have to bring in coal or fire up the stove because she’d already done it. And there was no sense sweeping because every time a breeze wiggled the noodles, flour sifted on the floor.”
Daisy nodded. “We didn’t have any home assignments from school. So we asked if we could go out and play.”
“You asked?” When children looked the most innocent—that’s when you needed to be the most suspicious. Sam had learned this parental lesson the hard way.
Daisy frowned at Lucy. “Well . . .”
“Like we said, there weren’t any chores or school assignments so maybe we were in a hurry and didn’t ask. Maybe we just said that we were going outside. But she said that was all right. She gave us permission to go.”
“She did, Papa. Lucy told her where we were going and she said it was all right.”
“Then she got mad because we weren’t home one minute after the six o’clock whistle. And then she got mad because we didn’t like her noodles and picked them out of the stew. She’s mad at us all the time. She hates us.”