were the devil's playthings and didn't allow them in the house. Ella didn't know if that was true--her mother said it wasn't--but she was solidly on her grandfather's side, so she never mentioned what he did at the park while she rode the merry-go-round.
"One day, the magic happened--Ella reached out while going around and caught the gold ring. She was so excited she failed to keep a good grip and she dropped it. An older boy jumped off his horse, grabbed the gold ring and wouldn't give it back. When the ride ended, Ella told the man who took care of the carousel, but he said whoever had the gold ring in his hand won the free ride."
"That was mean," Davis said. "What'd she do?"
"Ella went crying to her grandfather. He agreed it was unfair but pointed out there was nothing to be done about it. Even the mean boy had vanished by now. He comforted her until she stopped crying."
"By the time they got home, Ella had somehow twisted the unfair rule around to apply to her grandmother not letting her grandfather play cards in his own house. If she'd kept her mouth shut, everything would have been all right, but Ella, still upset about the gold ring, confronted her grandmother, asking why she was so mean to Grandfather."
"So then it all came out. Grandmother labelled Grandfather a back-sliding sinner and lectured Ella's parents about their wayward child. They got upset and left California sooner than they'd planned. On the way home to Iowa, they told Ella she had too big a mouth and let this be a lesson. Before they visited again, Grandfather died and Ella always wondered if it wasn't somehow her fault."
"Whoa, that's way sad," Davis said.
"Is there a moral?" Bram asked.
"Yeah," Davis replied. "Don't drop the gold ring."
"Life isn't always fair," Vala put in.
"I can go along with both of those," Bram told them, "but I have a different one. Don't let something that upset you in the past color your whole life."
Vala stared at him. "That's just what happened to my Grandmother Ella. She always blamed herself when anything went wrong. I never thought about it before."
"If she hadn't dropped the gold ring, she'd've been all right," Davis insisted. "Let's not talk about any more sad things. We could tell jokes. Me first."
Though Vala laughed in the right places and even told a few jokes of her own, her mind kept going back to her Grandmother Ella. Finally she realized why. Ever since she'd divorced Neal, she'd shied away from any kind of a meaningful relationship with a man. In effect, she'd done what Ella had done. After she "lost" her wedding ring by getting divorced, she had been afraid to take another chance. Why? It wasn't all her fault that the marriage had failed, Neal was as much to blame as she was. Yet he hadn't let it bother him. Look at him with another wife and another son already.
It wouldn't have helped to keep the damn ring, along with the marriage. She and Neal had been miserable together, they were better off apart.
So now what did it mean that she'd plunged headlong into involvement with another man? A hopeless involvement. Was it due to a twist in her defense mechanism? Bram was safe to fall for because there wasn't a chance for anything permanent between them? No wedding ring, no failure?
"Mom," Davis said, nudging her, "it's your turn to tell a joke."
"I think you'd better skip me this time," she said. "I'm all joked out."
As the day slipped into an early evening and the rain turned into a heavy mist, it became clear there'd be no sleeping under the stars tonight. Since their gear took up most of the extension, obviously they'd be bedding down in the tent's close quarters.
Vala tried to figure out a way to keep Davis between Bram and her but the configuration of the tent lent itself best to an arrangement whereby Davis, being shorter, slept behind their heads at the rear of the tent.
"I'll turn the sleeping bags around," Bram said, "so Davis will be at our feet instead. We're less likely to wake each other up that way."
"Yeah," Davis agreed. "Sometimes Mom snores a little."
"I do not!" Vala said.
"Want me to let you know in the morning?" Bram asked her, chuckling.
She flushed, realizing he probably already knew whether she did or not. Tonight, she decided, was not going to be peaceful.
When they were settled into their