a foul mood.
“She better hurry. I’m hungry,” he says, bringing his bag to the kitchen.
“You shouldn’t have kept her upstairs all afternoon,” Elijah hisses to me as we walk to the truck parked in front of the house. He’s not wrong. She’s my responsibility, and I let her nap. It was my decision to let her waste time in the shower when she should have been downstairs doing her chores.
“She’ll hurry. It’ll be fine.” I hoist three bags from the bed of the truck. We raise some of our meat on our little homestead, and Nicolette grows a lot of our vegetables in her small garden, but Papa hasn’t started the slaughtering yet, and the harvest has been pretty shitty this year. Nicolette has plenty of jarred veggies to get us through the winter, but Papa wants meat with every meal.
By the weight of the bags, it looks like he’s stocked us up for at least a month. There’re cans of fruit. Nicolette will be happy about that. She loves fruit. There’re several gallons of milk she can freeze. Papa won’t have to go down the mountain for a long time.
Nicolette is already in the kitchen when we bring the last bags in. She keeps her gaze from me, probably thinking I’m mad.
“Here you go.” I put the bag on the counter next to her and run my hand softly down her arm. She needs to know she’s not facing any consequences from me. As much as I love seeing the trace of fear in her eyes, I don’t like when she’s tense for no reason.
“Thanks.” She starts pulling the cans out of the bag.
“When’s dinner going to be ready?” Papa demands, coming in from the back porch, his rifle is in hand.
“If spaghetti is okay, twenty minutes,” she offers, holding up a jar of sauce and box of noodles.
He nods. “Fine. Boys, the pigs need feeding. Get to it. We’ll eat when you’re done,” he says, then stomps out of the house again.
“What’s he doing?” Elijah asks. Papa likes to take care of the pigs himself. If he’s having us doing the feeding, he’s off doing something else. What’s he need his gun for?
“Don’t know, but he’s not happy tonight. Both of you mind your mouths.” I don’t rule over Elijah like I do Nicolette, but he’s younger than me. He takes my warning to heart. Nicolette hurries to put the groceries away and get dinner started.
Elijah and I get our boots on and head out the pig pen, each with a bucket of slop.
“I didn’t see the books for Nicolette in the bags, did you?” Elijah asks as he fills the smaller trough for the little pigs.
“Books? Oh, for her birthday? No. I didn’t see them.” I hook my empty pail on a nail.
Elijah shakes his head.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He shrugs.
“No, not nothing—what?” I say harder.
He presses his hip against the fence and stares at me. “It’s her birthday and she asks for so little.”
I can agree with him on that. She’s learned not to ask for anything she doesn’t need. She can be lazy sometimes, but she’s not spoiled with material things.
“Maybe he forgot,” I say. “He’s got a lot on his mind, you know.”
“Like what?” Elijah says with a half-smile. “When will he let us start worrying about this place like him? She’s going to have our baby in her belly soon, then we’ll be the husbands.”
“Well, when that happens, we’ll figure it out. Papa will always be our Papa. He’s not going anywhere, Elijah. Even after we take her as our wife. She’ll always belong to him too.”
“We’ll have share with him too.” He nods, but I can see he doesn’t like it.
“She’ll always belong to all of us, but when we’re her husbands, we’ll be fully responsible for her—which means you have to open your eyes where she’s concerned.”
Elijah rolls his eyes and pushes off the fence. “My eyes are wide open. Maybe you should open your heart a little more to her,” he counters.
It’s my turn to roll my eyes. “I love her as much as I love you. But I’m responsible for her, and that means I can’t spoil her. We can’t spoil her,” I correct.
“I won’t. I was just hoping he’d get the books so she could read new stuff to us.” He swings the pail as he checks the troughs to be sure everyone got their dinner.
“A new book would be nice,” I agree. “When he’s in a better mood, we’ll ask,”