“You picked this skirt. You said you liked dark green.” She took a sip of tea, hoping it would soothe her nerves. She’d read somewhere that a hot drink on a hot day was actually cooling. But so far the theory wasn’t working.
Daisy nodded over the sampler she was stitching. “You said you liked green, I heard you.”
“Just shut up. I’m sick of you always taking her side!”
“Lucy, that’s enough.” Angie shoved back the heat-damp hair sticking to her forehead. “We don’t tell each other to shut up in this family. It isn’t nice.”
Lucy’s chin rose and she thrust out her lower lip. “You’re not part of our family. I wish you’d go back where you came from!” Sudden tears glittered in her gray eyes. “Nobody wants you here.”
Before Lucy’s dress was ready to wear, Angie would spend a dozen or more hours stitching seams, then doing the finish work and trim. And for what? A dress that Lucy wouldn’t wear? Because Lucy didn’t like her and wished she’d go away?
Maybe it was the heat, maybe she was discouraged, or maybe she was just tired of trying, but something snapped.
“I will not permit you to speak to me like that,” she said angrily. “Go to your room and stay there until you’re ready to apologize.”
“I won’t!”
This confrontation had been coming from the beginning. Angie realized she’d been a fool to think she could avoid it. And today she was in no mood for persuasion or diversion or any of the other ploys she’d used to evade escalating the friction between herself and Lucy. She was hot and tired and out of patience.
Planting her fists on her hips, she drew herself up and made no effort to disguise her temper. “You will go to your room. If I have to drag you in there—I promise you, I will!”
Neither of the girls had seen her really angry before, with the Italian side in full flare. Moreover, the incident that sparked her temper was a small one, as last straws often were.
The girls stared at her flushed face and hard eyes, and Angie recognized the instant that Lucy understood she would make good on her threat. One way or another Lucy was going to her room. She could go under her own power or Angie could drag her, but she was going.
Furious tears spilled down Lucy’s cheeks. She stamped her foot then her gaze settled on the table. Snatching up the teacup and saucer, she hurled them to the floor. “I hate you!” Sobbing, she ran into the bedroom and slammed the door.
Shocked, Angie blinked down at the shattered pieces of her mother’s teacup and saucer, then, throat tight, she sank to a chair and covered her eyes.
There was no escape. She couldn’t run away. As she had known she would, she had refused Peter’s proposition in no uncertain terms. Peter would not repeat his offer of financial assistance.
“Me and Papa want you here.” Daisy knelt on the floor, collecting the broken pieces of china into the lap of her apron. “This was your mama’s cup.”
Angie nodded dully. “Be careful. Don’t cut yourself.”
“Maybe we can glue it back together.”
“I don’t think so.”
Daisy wiped a hand across her eyes. “Lucy didn’t mean what she said.” She blinked up at Angie. “She thinks Mama is watching us.”
“Hello, hello.” Sam came in the back door, smiling and as cheerful as if ten days of silence had not occurred.
Angie’s eyebrows rose. “What are you doing home in the middle of the day?”
“Get your hats and gloves, ladies. We’re going to town for ice cream.” Sam looked at the material bunched on the table, then at Daisy kneeling on the floor with the broken cup and saucer in her lap. “Where’s Lucy?”
To her disgust and embarrassment, Angie burst into tears.
The ice cream excursion was not a success.
First Sam had to deal with Lucy, who wept in his arms and sobbed that she wished Angie had never come to live with them. Angie made her feel bad, and Angie ordered her around. She wanted her real mother. The best Sam could do was hold her, pat her small back, and murmur, “I know, I know.”
He let that storm pass then approached the apology, which he agreed had to be made.
“Angie doesn’t deserve the hurtful things you said. And I think you know it was mean and wrong to break Angie’s mother’s teacup.”
“I do feel bad about the teacup,” Lucy whispered miserably.
Sam dabbed at the tears on her cheeks with his handkerchief. “Angie’s tried hard to take care of you and Daisy and do right by you both. Why won’t you let her be your friend?”
Something in what he’d said must have been wrong because the result was a fresh onslaught of tears. In the end he resorted to a tactic he didn’t like, but he couldn’t think of anything else.