Biggie and the Devil Diet - By Nancy Bell Page 0,60

lap. "I won't," she said.

"You must," Biggie said. "You can't hurt her now."

Now she looked up at Biggie with eyes like a deer caught in the headlights. "You mean…?"

"Oh, no!" Grace gasped.

The ranger spoke to Stacie. "You can talk here or at the jail. You won't like it down there."

"I'm not going to jail!" Stacie buried her face in her hands and sobbed. "You can't make me. I didn't do murder."

"But you know who did," the ranger said. "You might as well tell us. She wouldn't want you to lie anymore."

Stacie stared into the fire for a long time. Then she sighed. "Maybe you're right." She sat up straight and crossed her feet at her ankles. "But I'll have to tell you about me so you'll understand."

Biggie nodded. "Go on, honey."

Stacie took a deep breath. "The day I was born, I was a ward of the state. My birth mother was just a kid and couldn't take care of me. There was some kind of problem with letting me be adopted— something about my birth father refusing to sign away his rights." She sniffed loudly and Grace pulled a tissue out of her pocket and handed it to her. "Finally, when I was four, I was sent to a home… or a hellhole. It was run by a preacher and his wife. Hellfire and brimstone types. Their motto was: Spare the rod and spoil the child. Well, they sure didn't spare the rod— only in our case it was rubber hoses, one for beating us and the other for spraying us with cold water when we acted up. We slept on hard mats on the floor and ate barely enough to keep us alive and able to work on the farm, where they grew organic vegetables to sell to fancy stores."

"That's horrible," Babe said.

"You don't know the half of it." Stacie frowned at her. "And you never will because you're just a spoiled brat."

For once, Babe kept her mouth shut.

"Go on," Biggie said.

"I was one of the lucky ones," she continued. "I didn't die. Some did, and they were buried under the cornfield."

"I don't believe it." Rob was shocked. "The authorities would have known."

"That's what you think," Stacie said. "The preacher, his name was Brother Jimson, and his wife were the best liars in the world. When the social workers came around, they'd just say the dead kids were off visiting friends or some such thing. The fools never caught on. That is until one official got smart. He started in questioning us kids. At first we were too scared to talk." She stopped. "I'm hungry and I'm thirsty!"

The ranger went into the kitchen and shortly Josefina came out and set down a tray with a glass of milk and a plate of cookies on the table beside Stacie. Stacie ate a whole cookie and drank half the glass of milk before she would say another word.

"So what happened next?" Biggie prodded.

"They closed the place, and we were all sent to other foster homes." Stacie shuddered. "I had nightmares for years about Brother Jimson coming to take me back again."

"But he never came?" Babe asked.

Stacie gave her a scornful look. "Of course not. He was in jail. Then I went to live with a family in Waco. They had a bunch of us kids, as many as five at one time. They paid their bills by taking in foster kids. But they fed us good and gave us a clean place to sleep. We all used to wonder about our birth families. In bed at night, we'd talk about finding them someday. Naturally, we all imagined our real parents had been searching for us all our lives— and they were all rich."

"But your dream came true." Biggie said.

"Uh-huh."

"Tell us about that."

"It was just a miracle, that's all. See, what happened, I had been starved so much as a little kid that when I got enough to eat, I just couldn't stop. I got fatter and fatter until the doctor told my foster parents something had to be done. I was getting what he called 'morbidly obese.' He told my foster mother about this place, and I was sent here. The miracle was, my very own mother was the owner."

"Laura." Biggie said.

"Yeah. I'd been pretty miserable here from the very first and showed it. She"— she pointed to Grace—"reminded me of old Brother Jimson, the way she treated us mean and made us work."

"It was for your own good," Grace said.

"Yeah,