Beneath a Southern Sky - By Deborah Raney Page 0,56
in the nursery?” he asked.
“No, I hung it up with mine in the foyer.”
“Okay. I’ll go get them.”
Daria was almost in tears on the way home. “I just don’t know what to do when she gets like that, Cole” she whined. “It’s like I have no control over her whatsoever.”
“You just need to keep being firm with her, Daria. Every time you give in, she thinks she’s won.”
In the seat behind them, Natalie sat in her car seat, sucking her thumb furiously, looking from one to the other as though she knew she was the subject of their conversation—and was rather enjoying that fact.
“Do you think I should have made her stay in the nursery this morning?”
He thought for a minute, then nodded. “I do, Daria. You rewarded her fit by giving her exactly what she wanted.”
“But it didn’t seem fair to leave the nursery helpers with a screaming brat,” she defended herself.
“I have a feeling she would have stopped screaming almost as soon as we were out of sight.”
Daria sighed. “You’re probably right. But it’s so hard.”
He reached across the console and patted her arm. “She’ll learn.”
Daria knew Cole was right. She did let her daughter have her own way whenever she threw a tantrum, while Cole seemed mostly immune to the little girl’s whims.
When Cole stopped at the apartment a few minutes later and Daria unbuckled Natalie from her car seat, she couldn’t help but long for the soon-coming day when she would go home with Cole and share the mixed blessing of this stubborn little girl who now smiled up at her with the face of an angel.
The supper dishes were done, and Natalie was down for the night. Daria flipped on the television set and wandered through the apartment straightening up. While a mindless sitcom droned in the background, she gathered up toys strewn across the floor, piles of magazines she’d yet to read, and stacks of mail that needed sorting.
On top of a “to keep” stack of magazines lay the newest issue of Brides. Daria smiled even while a mild sense of panic came over her as she thought of all there was to do in the next few weeks.
With the toys tucked away in their baskets and the magazines neatly stacked on the floor by the sofa, Daria tackled the dining room table. She tossed junk mail into the trash and gathered up receipts and bills to file. As she sorted through a stack of old mail, a familiar sheet of onionskin paper appeared among the envelopes. Daria was filled with a sense of dread she couldn’t quite name.
She started to unfold the thin sheet of paper, but impulsively put it, along with its envelope, on the stack of junk mail. She carried the whole pile into the kitchen and stuffed it into the wastebasket. The letter sat on top of the heaping container, accusing her.
On impulse she went to the closet in her bedroom and rummaged on the top shelf until her hand touched an old shoebox. She pulled it down, slipped off the elastic bands that secured the lid, and gingerly opened it. Inside, along with some Gospel Outreach newsletters and some old newspaper clippings, were a dozen black cassette tapes, each labeled in Nate’s sloppy printing. She took the box into the living room and slipped one of the cassettes into the stereo. Pushing the Play button, she sat back on the sofa, trembling.
The tape wound silently for several seconds, and then there was a scratchy sound like static. She sat, staring far beyond the stereo speakers, waiting. The static continued, but suddenly Nate’s voice filled the room.
“Uh, it’s June fifteenth,” he said in his soft, matter-of-fact “taping” voice. “We’ve been here almost five months now, and we’re adjusting well to the climate. It’s been raining for almost three days straight, but we’re staying pretty dry in the hut…”
At those words, Daria recognized the sound she’d mistaken for static as one of the torrential downpours they’d had that first rainy season in Timoné. Over the rain and Nate’s quiet voice, a bird squawked. She closed her eyes, transported.
Nate’s voice droned on. “Daria’s been making some progress with the kids here, just getting to know them mostly, learning their names, but she has plans to start formal lessons soon. They really seem to have taken a liking to her and follow her all over the village. I’ve been calling her the Pied Piper.” He chuckled, then cleared his throat and continued, his