The Bride of Willow Creek(21)
His eyebrows lifted. “The noodles are delicious. Why wouldn’t you eat them?”
“I don’t like noodles.”
“Since when? You’ve always liked noodles in the past.” He looked at Daisy. “How about you?”
“Well, I liked some of the noodles.” Daisy darted a glance at Lucy. “But not all of them. Most of them I didn’t like.”
“So you didn’t eat your suppers.”
“She didn’t give us a chance! You’ll never believe what she did! She took our plates away and scraped them back into the stew pot! She wants to starve us!”
“It’s true,” Daisy confirmed. “We’re starving, Papa.”
“All right, let’s see what we’ve got here.” He held up his hand and ticked down his fingers. “Angie did all your chores, but she wanted you to make your bed and clean your room. She expected you to come home on time after she’d worked all day to make your supper. And she wanted you to eat what was on your plates, which is probably the rule at every table in this country.”
“It doesn’t sound right when you say it,” Lucy said, pushing her mouth into a pout.
“You didn’t say the one about her starving us.”
“If the two of you hadn’t suddenly turned into picky eaters, your stomachs would be full now.” Angie was starving them. Heaven help him. He pulled a hand down his face. “From now on you’ll make your bed in the morning and keep your room picked up. And I want you here for supper no later than five minutes after the six o’clock whistle.”
“You don’t come home until it’s dark.”
“That’s different. I have to check my claims.”
“And then you stop by the Gold Slipper,” Lucy said.
“We can smell the beer and the cigar smoke.”
“A man’s entitled to wet his whistle after a long day.” That’s where he caught up on the daily news, who’d made a strike, who was waiting for an assay report, who’d gone bust.
“What about her ordering us around?”
“Keep in mind that Angie won’t be with us forever. While she’s here, let’s all try to get along. That’s going to mean some compromise on everyone’s part.”
They groaned and fell on each other’s shoulders.
“Angie’s responsible for you when I’m not here, so you do as she says. And I don’t want to hear any more about you refusing to eat what’s set before you.”
“We’ll eat it if we have to, but she can’t make us like it!”
“You don’t have to like it. But you do have to eat your supper.” Golden-haired, gray-eyed, their faces ravaged by his betrayal, they made him feel guilty about doing what he knew was fair and right. That was another thing he didn’t understand. How did they do that? How did two small girls manage to make him feel so damned guilty when he was absolutely right and they were absolutely wrong? “I don’t know about you two, but I’m getting cold. If we’ve covered everything, let’s go inside and get warm.”
“Papa?” In the glow of the lantern light, Daisy looked like Sam’s vision of an angel. “What about how we’re starving? Are you going to send us to bed starving?”
He kissed the top of her head. “Yes.”
Everything in him objected to sending a child to bed hungry. His inclination was to give them another lecture about eating their supper, then offer them some bread and butter and jelly. But if he did, he would undermine Angie. If he expected the girls to respect her, then he had to support her decisions.
He placed a hand on two small shoulders. “Look at it this way. You’ll really enjoy breakfast tomorrow.” He gave them a little push inside.
While he was out in the cold talking to the girls, Angie had whisked away his supper plate. The girls weren’t the only ones who would be going to bed hungry tonight. “It’s your turn,” he said in a tight voice, holding the back door open.
“I’d prefer that we settle these matters with everyone present so we all know where we stand.” Rising from the table, Angie faced him, not dropping her gaze to the girls at his side. “First. In your opinion, is it reasonable to expect Lucy and Daisy to make their bed and keep their room clean?”
“Absolutely. We talked about it and they agree.”
“What other chores do they usually do?”
“They dust, sweep the floors and porches, wash the dishes from breakfast, clean out their lunch buckets, keep the stove going, help Mrs. Molly if Mrs. Molly is doing any of our laundry on laundry days. What else? It feels like I’m missing something.”