“That’s a lot.” Some of the anger faded from Angie’s brow when she finally looked at the girls. “Most of what you’ve been doing, I’ll do from now on. We all agree that you’ll make your bed and keep your room clean. I’d like you to continue cleaning your lunch buckets. You’ll take turns setting the table and helping with meals and the cleanup. Those are your regular chores. There may be special chores on occasion, and it’s possible that I’ve overlooked something. If so it will be added later.”
All right, her manner was a tad high-handed. And the snapping eyes and clipped words didn’t make anyone happy. But what she said impressed Sam as reasonable, so he didn’t interrupt.
“Apparently I’m the only person who believed that six o’clock was supper time.” She pointed to the clock. In fact, she was doing a lot of arm waving. Sam figured it might be the Italian thing she’d told him about. “So what is supper time in this house?”
“The girls don’t have pocket watches, so the six o’clock whistle is their only signal that it’s getting close to supper. To give them a chance to get home and get washed, let’s say six-thirty is the girls’ supper time.” He looked down at them. “I don’t care what you’re doing when the whistle blows, you head for home right then.”
“The girls’ supper time? And what about you?”
“With summer coming on, the light’s going to last longer and I can get some work done on my best claim. I’ll get home around sundown.”
“This is not a restaurant.” The fizz and snap returned to her eyes and she punctuated every word with a jabbing finger. “I serve supper once and once only. At six-thirty. If you’re here you get hot food and you get a plate put in front of you. If you don’t show up until after six-thirty, you can feed yourself with whatever is left over.”
He blinked.
“Now. On to the next thing. Do you allow your daughters to loiter around the Old Homestead hoping for a glimpse of a fancy-dressed whore?” Narrowed eyes met his. “Whore is their word, not mine.”
He stared down at his daughters.
“I told her we were going to the Old Homestead, and she said we could!”
“Lucy, you knew perfectly well that Angie wouldn’t know about the Old Homestead. How the hell do you know about it?”
“Sam, you will not use profanity in front of the girls.”
Now she was correcting him? He gave her a scowl that promised they would talk later. “Lucy? Daisy? How do you know about the Old Homestead?”
They looked at each other with incredulity. The stupidest question in the world had just been asked and they were amazed. Sam bit down on his back teeth and waited.
“Papa, everyone knows about the Old Homestead. That’s where the prettiest, fanciest whores live,” Lucy explained with great patience. This was a given, a fact. Lucy implied that only an imbecile could live in Willow Creek without knowing where to go if he had a two-hundred-dollar itch. And hell, maybe she was right. If five- and seven-year-olds knew about the Old Homestead, then who was left who didn’t? “We like to watch Miss Lily ride.”
Daisy nodded. “She rides a shiny black horse with a braided tail. And she wears pretty hats with long feathers. I like the red feather best.”
“But the best thing of all is the way Miss Lily doesn’t look to the left or the right. She looks straight ahead like she doesn’t know or care if anyone’s watching. She rides like this.” Planting her hands on her hips, Lucy lifted her chin, put her nose in the air, and glided forward with an air of haughty disdain. “We’ve seen her out walking, too. She has the most beautiful clothes!”
To say that Sam was flabbergasted would be to understate his reaction by a mile. He couldn’t believe this. His daughters were ardent admirers of Willow Creek’s most celebrated whore, but they didn’t have a kind word for the respectable woman standing in front of them.
“Well,” he said after a minute, feeling at a loss. He wasn’t sure where to begin. “I don’t want you going anywhere near the Old Homestead, do you hear me?”
They both stared at him. Then Lucy said, “We have to walk past the Old Homestead on the way to school.”
Damn. In the mornings, the Old Homestead was as quiet as a tomb and he never paid it a lick of attention. Not one time had he imagined what might be happening there at three-thirty in the afternoon when they walked home without him.
“All right. You have to walk past the place.” He would fix that problem if it was the last thing he did. “But you don’t come home, say hello to Angie, then go back to the Old Homestead. You don’t loiter around any of the parlor houses. And if I ever hear about either of you saying the word whore, I’ll wash your mouth out with soap. Decent little girls don’t say words like that.”