“We can’t afford anything,” the girl said. “It’s so stupid, how poor we are.”
Dan restrained himself from making a sharp reply. She was just a child and couldn’t be expected to understand his financial situation.
“So what’s going on?” he asked again.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, but he could see the way her thin shoulders stiffened.
“You’ve been real quiet since we came in from outside. Is something bothering you?”
“Of course not.” She wiped a plate with unnecessary energy and slammed it into the dish rack. “Except that I have to do stupid Chris’s job for her because she’s too lazy.”
“You might as well tell me, Ellie,” Dan said reasonably, “because you know I’m going to find out, anyhow. And I might be upset if something happens to catch me by surprise.”
When she turned around, her boyish face wasn’t defiant, just troubled.
“Daddy…” She leaned against the counter, one thin brown leg wrapped around the other. Dan could see the bare sole of her foot, dirty and marked with a painful-looking bruise.
“What, sweetheart?” he asked.
“If I found something, would it be mine to keep?”
“I guess it depends on where you found it,” he said after a moment’s thought.
“I mean, if I found it here on our farm and I knew it didn’t belong to you or Chris and Josh.”
“So how would it get here?”
She turned away uneasily and looked out the window while Dan watched her with growing interest.
“How about if the wind blew it here?” Ellie said, fixing her dark eyes on him again. “Would it be mine if I found it?”
Dan thought this over, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “If the wind blew something here and you found it, I’d say you were entitled to keep it.”
She turned back around, relief shining in her face. She reached into the pocket of her shorts, took a bit of paper out and came over to place it on the table in front of him. Dan stared in astonishment.
It was a wet, crumpled, fifty-dollar bill.
“I found it in the river,” she said. “Just floating along in the water.”
“No kidding.” Dan studied the bill, fascinated, then grinned at his daughter. “Let’s get some flashlights and go back out there,” he said. “Maybe there’s more.”
She laughed, picked up the bill and returned it to her pocket.
“It’ll have to go into your bank account,” Dan told her. “Unless there’s anything you need to buy. Clothes or something for school.”
“I don’t want any stupid clothes. Can you put it in the bank for me when you go to town?”
“Sure,” Dan said. “And if things get real tough,” he added, “I can borrow from you. With fifty dollars in the bank, you’ll be the richest person in the family.”
She smiled, then turned away and began drying dishes. An uneasy silence fell.
“So,” Dan said at last, “we haven’t had a chance to talk much since yesterday, Ellie. What happened with Mrs. Graham?”
Her back stiffened again, and she rubbed a plate without looking at him. “That woman was such an old cow,” she muttered. “And she was mean, Daddy. You should have heard how she yelled at Josh.”
Dan sighed. “You never give them a chance, honey. Mrs. Graham was the third housekeeper I’ve hired in the last four months, and she only lasted a few days. That’s some kind of record, even for us.”
“We don’t need a housekeeper,” Ellie said. “Chris and I can do it.”
Dan looked around at the messy kitchen, then back at his daughter. “She told me you were rude and impossible to manage.”
“She was a jerk!” Ellie said passionately. “I hated her!”
Dan struggled to be patient.
“You hate all of them, sweetheart. But we need some help, and it’s not easy to find a housekeeper like Mrs. Graham who’s willing to live in Crystal Creek and drive back and forth every day. Most of them want to live in, but we don’t have an extra room.”
“We don’t need her! I hate having strangers in my house, Daddy. Especially jerks like her who don’t even know what they’re doing.”
“She was highly recommended by the last family she worked for,” Dan said. “And she was willing to do housework and child care and make a hot meal in the evening. It seemed like a pretty good deal to me.”
“But it must have cost a lot.” Ellie turned to look at him directly.
“Quite a bit,” Dan admitted.
“And you’re always talking about how we don’t have any money.”
“Things are tight, but some expenses are necessary, Ellie. I worry about Chris and Josh. They need more attention than they’re getting, and I’m too busy to look after them properly.”
“I can look after them,” Ellie said stubbornly. “And Chris and I can work harder to keep the house clean. I’m learning to cook supper, too.”
“Macaroni and cheese every night isn’t exactly a balanced diet, honey.”
“Aunt Mary can teach me other stuff. She said I could come over any time I wanted to learn to cook.”
Dam looked in despair at his daughter. He loved her dearly, but Ellie was the most frustrating, inflexible person he’d ever known.
She’s just like you, his wife used to point out. Everybody in Crystal Creek knows where that stubbornness of hers comes from, Dan Gibson.
“Do you ever give any thought to what life is like for me, Ellie?” he said quietly.
“I don’t know what you mean.” She stood on tiptoe to put glasses away in the cupboard.
“Well, you keep telling me how you and Chris can look after things and we don’t need a housekeeper. But the two of you are in school all day. That means I have to take Josh with me all the time, no matter what I’m doing. It’s not easy to do a full day of farm work with a two-year-old running along behind you. And he still needs a nap in the afternoon, you know.”
She considered this, frowning. “Aunt Mary would look after him anytime you asked. She loves him.”
“You kids are my responsibility,” he said. “Mary and Bubba have been good to us since your mother went away, but I can’t ask Mary to be a full-time baby-sitter. She has work of her own to do.”
