The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,144

on either side of the doorway, reciting dates and names. Lil tapped the highest mark that indicated her and Jennie’s height. We froze for a moment as her finger inched up the empty space above that line. No measurements had been added since Jennie’s death.

Gracie recovered first, leaping up to grab a ruler from the desk. She balanced it on her head as she pressed her back against the door frame. “Measure us, Mom.”

She squared her shoulders and stood very straight and still as I held the ruler level and measured her. Rose was next, smirking with satisfaction to see that she had gained on Gracie, who was now only a fraction of an inch below the line marked “Momma—June 1953.”

Adam walked in, wiping his face on a handkerchief as the back door swung shut behind him.

“You’re next!” Gracie called to him.

“Stop cheating, Lil.” Rosie perched the ruler on Lil’s head.

Lil lowered her heels to the floor, then turned to look at the mark Gracie made.

Adam joined us and ran his finger from Jennie’s name up to the line of Lil’s new height. “Look how much you’ve grown.”

Lil bit her lip. Her eyes went back and forth between the two marks. “She would be this tall now, too,” she whispered.

“Yes, she would be,” Adam replied. He massaged her shoulders. “Your turn.” He touched Sara’s back.

Sarah stepped up. She’d grown the most, almost three inches.

Gracie waved the ruler impatiently. “Mom and Dad, you two haven’t been measured in years. Come on!”

“We won’t have grown, we’re already grown up,” I protested.

But Adam stepped up and Gracie reached, leveling the ruler over his head.

“Wow! You’ve grown,” Rosie boomed. “Look!”

I pointed to his feet. “Your boots.”

Sarah helped him pull them off while he balanced on one foot.

In his stocking feet, he still stood taller than his original height. His feet were flat on the floor. I measured him again. Six foot three and a half. A little more than an inch between the first and second measurement.

He stepped away from the door frame, unimpressed with his growth. I took his place.

Gracie squinted at the line of her father’s height above my head. “That is weird. He has grown!”

I was slightly shorter than my first measurement. Adam marked my height right over the new line for Gracie.

Within minutes, all of them had dispersed, intent on phone calls, TV, homework, or chores. My eyes kept returning to the new, darker mark above all the others. He had grown. Only an inch or so in the fourteen years we’d been recording the girls’ heights there. We were literally going in opposite directions. But what did it mean about him? About us? Every time I walked through that doorway, I felt I passed through those questions.

We put up a simple sign—THE HOPE RANCH, A. & E. HOPE—and built a second, larger stable. Adam began boarding, training, buying, and selling horses as he had in North Carolina. He quickly filled the stables. They were farther from the house than they had been on the farm. But I could hear Adam as he worked, his whistle and calls to the horses, and on the days he gave his horsemanship lessons, his admonitions to the riders to “balance. True yourself.”

My garden lay between the house and the stables, and I kept some chickens. Having my own land felt like a wondrous, luxurious relief, endearing me to the place I’d recently found so strange. I still missed the farm. I missed the Clarion hills. I missed Joe, Cole, the Sunday picking parties at Marge and Freddie’s, quiet Rita, and even cranky Bertie, but I no longer ached for them.

Lil and Sarah helped me plant persimmon, fig, and pecan trees in the afternoons, when they came home from school. Rosie nearly lived in the stables when she and Gracie were not picking at their guitars or listening to Joan Baez or Beatles albums. In fact, all four girls took up some kind of instrument. Lil joined the marching band at her school and played the flute. Sarah began lessons on violin Tuesdays after school and impromptu fiddle lessons from Adam in the evenings. He found some local picking parties and often took all the girls. I was the only nonmusical one in the family.

The next year, Gracie turned eighteen and was on a date almost every Friday and Saturday night. Sometimes, Rosie would go out with her—a double date. Ranch life started early in the morning and we were all usually in bed