The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,114

more than what you were given. You kept to yourself and took care of yourself. Even when you were a bitty little thing and kept wandering off. We didn’t let you go. You went. And you found your way around. Never snake-bit. Never hurt. The others—especially Rita—needed more watching, needed more discipline. You just didn’t need it—Would’a been a waste on you.” He put his pipe back in his mouth and began rocking again.

“Why do you think I was different?” My heart banged in my chest.

“That’s just how it was. I’m sure your girls are the same, some needing more than others. That’s all there is to it.”

I was not prepared for him to draw parallels between his situation and mine, but I pressed on. “That’s all there is to it?”

“Yep, that’s it.” He returned his pipe to his lips, took a long drag. His rocking chair squeaked dismissively as he squinted at the mill.

That old longing swelled in my throat. I’d always wanted more from him. More affection, more discipline, more stories, more touch. But, lately, I also felt the press of gratitude. He’d kept Momma from the wrath of her stern father and the scorn of a whole town. He was still protecting her.

I didn’t want to cry in front of him. I patted the arm of his rocker. “Well, I thank you for all of it” was the best I could do. I did not have the will or energy to goad my father for more. And what good would it have done? Long ago, he had chosen his path. I let the sleeping dog of my mother’s secret lie.

I was, in my own way, a perverse echo of her.

Before the deaths, Adam had remained, in some essential way, innocent. He had, as far as I knew, never been a child. He hadn’t been bent, while very young and still supple, by the knowledge of mortality that the death of a pet or a distant relative brings.

An uncharacteristic quietness enveloped him. He’d always been capable of a kind of absorbed, open calm, especially when working with a damaged horse or trying to quiet the girls, but now his stillness seemed vacant, no longer a sign of will and effort, but an absence of both. When the girls went to him or the horses turned to Adam, he opened his hands, blind hands brushing lightly over the world, his body operating on rote memory. The only time he seemed at peace and fully present was when he listened to his daughters singing.

When Jennie died, the girls mourned, but the ostracism of their father, followed by their grandmother’s death, propelled them into another level of isolation. We’d always been somewhat removed from life in Clarion and the mill-village, but now the four of them were far less interested in going into town or visiting cousins. With Momma’s death, they seemed to retract into a greater reliance on each other while simultaneously surrendering to their individual passions and quirks. At some point, most evenings, they would gather at the kitchen table with their homework. On the evenings they had no homework, they would linger there after dinner.

Gracie focused on academics, particularly history. Her grades had always been high but they rose to straight As. She became the family manager, spending more time with her younger sisters, helping me get them ready for school, checking on their homework, singing them to sleep at night when they needed it. Rosie continued riding as much as possible. Formerly the most volatile of her sisters, she became the most quiet and cooperative, a change I could not read as wholly positive. Lil read voraciously, mostly fantasies in which good wizards and witches prevailed over evil. If she had no chores and nothing to read, she cleaned and cleaned the house. Each afternoon after school, she swept the front and back porches, jabbing at the boards of the floor until she banished every speck of dirt. Sarah, of course, continued to draw. Orange-haired girls, increasingly more detailed and realistically proportioned, crowded her drawings, their dresses blood-red. Their eyes wide circles. Their mouths open in an O of terror or song.

I still had not shared with Adam what Momma had told me. For the first time ever, I kept something from him. But Momma’s story of my father began to plague me. I grasped at it for some relief from the memories of Jennie on the ground, of Adam’s bloody hands on the steering wheel, and