At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [78]
“Or a twenty-year-old college dropout,” Cici pointed out.
“Or a flock of sheep or a crazy sheepdog,” Bridget had to add.
“Or a deer.”
“Or two dozen chickens. I still don’t know what you want with two dozen chickens.”
“Look,” Cici said, glancing over at Lindsay, “I couldn’t have raised Lori after Richard left without the two of you. Even now, I sometimes think you’re better mothers to her than I am, and I know she thinks that more often than I do.” They smiled. “It might not take a village to raise a child, but it for damn sure takes a few good friends. We’re right beside you in this, Lindsay, and we’re in it all the way. You should know that.”
Lindsay, smiling, sniffing, and blotting moisture from her eyes with her fingertips, said, “I do. But thanks for saying it.”
They reached out to clasp hands, right there in the car, and closed their fingers together briefly before Cici returned her hand to the steering wheel, and her attention to the road.
“Ida Mae sent you out here for the chicken boxes half an hour ago.” Lori’s irritation was plain to see.
Noah straightened up from his slouching position against the barn door, drew on the cigarette in his hand, and deliberately blew smoke in her direction. “You’re not the boss of me.”
Lori pushed past him into the barn.
“You can tell if you want,” he said sullenly, following her. “I don’t care.”
“Yeah, well that’s easy to see.”
“What do you mean by that?” Noah demanded.
Shafts of light filtered through the boards of the barn and caught bits of chaff that were stirred up by Lori’s feet. She stood for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness, then spotted the cardboard boxes in an untidy pile where Noah apparently had tossed them yesterday. She started gathering them up.
“Is this going to be another lecture about how I don’t know how lucky I am?” Noah pursued. “Because you’re a fine one to be talking, if you ask me.”
Lori flicked a dark glance his way. “I’m not even going to ask what that’s supposed to mean.”
“It means you are a spoiled rich kid. You got folks that want to give you stuff—they’re practically throwing four years at a fancy-pants college in your face—and all you can do is screech at your mama about wanting to raise chickens. You’re not only spoiled, you’re stupid.”
Lori hesitated, then stuffed the lid on one of the boxes with particular force. “I’m exploring my options,” she told him archly. “I’m allowed to do that.”
“Yeah?” He pinched out the cigarette and tossed it away. “Like I said, you’re lucky.”
Lori lifted the boxes and turned to him. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt you to at least act like one of the family. To pretend you appreciate what everyone is doing for you.”
He returned, “I ain’t one of the family and pretending don’t make it so.”
Lori elbowed past him with her arms full of boxes. “I really don’t have time for this teenage angst,” she said. “I was supposed to get those chickens back to Jonesie an hour ago, and Ida Mae’s having a fit about them pooping all over the sunroom. But just for your information,” she tossed over her shoulder, “the reason no one is home this morning to catch you smoking is because they all went into town to try to beg that social worker to let you stay here. I heard Aunt Lindsay on the phone making the appointment. Of course, the way you acted to her it probably won’t make a difference, so good thing you don’t want to be part of the family.”
He stared at her. “Did they really do that? All three of them?”
“What do you care?” she retorted, and marched on to the house.
The Department of Family and Children’s Services was housed in a small white clapboard building at the end of Riker Street, between the police department and the library. “Oh, damn,” Bridget said as Cici pulled into one of the three visitor parking spaces. “I left that library book I was supposed to return on the kitchen table. It’s overdue. Do you think I should run in and apologize?”
“I think the library is like the IRS,” Cici said. “They don’t care about apologies. Just penalties