At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [99]
“Say.” She turned away from her work and picked up the sheet. “That’s pretty good. Thanks.”
“And here’s the book back.” He returned the book that she had renewed at the library. “What’re you going to do with that picture, anyhow?”
“Well,” she said, and there was a note of carefully repressed excitement in her voice as she tucked the drawing carefully inside a manila folder, “I was going to give it to Mom, and Aunt Bridget and Aunt Lindsay, for Mother’s Day—”
“Mother’s Day?” he repeated, surprised.
“I was going to say it was from both of us,” she defended. “After all, it was my idea, even if you did draw it.”
“But they’re not your mama.” He frowned. “The other two, I mean. How come you give them a present?”
“They may not be my actual mother,” she explained, “or mothers, as the case may be, but they’re like my mothers. My folks got divorced when I was little,” she added matter-of-factly, “and my mom had to work a lot, so they kind of helped raise me. You don’t have to be related to be a family, you know.”
He didn’t answer; he just stood there, frowning over the concept, so she shrugged. “Anyway, like I said, I was going to frame your drawing for Mother’s Day, because I thought they’d get a kick out of it, you know, but now I have a better idea. A much better idea,” she added determinedly, and turned back to her computer. “Of course it would go a lot faster if I had actual access to the Internet from my home computer, instead of having to drive half an hour each way just to Google one thing. Anyway . . .” She hit Save on the computer and closed the laptop. “I guess I can put this off until I can get back to the library. So, are you ready to finish the fountain?”
He was still frowning, but this expression was different from his usual demeanor of sullen discontent. It seemed more thoughtful, and even sad. He didn’t reply right away, and Lori started to repeat herself. Then he said, “You’re gonna have to finish it by yourself.”
Lori sat back in her chair and threw her hands up in exasperation. “Oh, terrific! That’s just terrific. I knew I couldn’t count on you. Didn’t I call it? ‘You’re just a kid,’ I said, ‘you’ll screw it up.’ Well, thank you very much for proving me right!”
He was quick to defend himself. “I didn’t screw it up! I mixed the cement, I patched the holes, I showed you how to set the rocks, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but you’re the one who knows what the pattern around the base is supposed to look like, and how am I going to move that heavy statue by myself? Typical, just typical. This family is in real trouble and I’m working my butt off to try to help, and what are you doing? Bailing, that’s what! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” She turned away in disgust. “I don’t know why I’m even wasting my breath on you.”
The silence that followed was so lengthy that Lori abandoned her annoyance to slide a glance toward him. He just stood there, looking sad, and that was when she noticed for the first time that he held his backpack by one strap in his hand. After a moment he reached into it, pulled out an eight-by-ten canvas, and looked at it for a moment before handing it to her in a single abrupt gesture. “Here,” he said. “This’ll show you what it’s supposed to look like.”
She looked at the painting of the fountain, and then at him, curiously, until his brows drew together sharply and he added, “Even a stupid girl ought to be able to figure it out from that.”
She laid the painting aside. “Gee, thanks a lot. That’ll make me feel ever so much better when I’m dragging rocks in from the field and trying to lift a two-hundred-pound statue by myself.”
“Yeah, well, you’re the one that signed up for it, not me.”
He turned to go and had reached the door before he looked back. “Hey,” he said. He waited until she looked at him, and then he seemed almost as though he didn’t know what to say. His jaw was set but his expression was uncomfortable and it seemed a long time before he said, simply, “Thanks for not telling.”
Lori just looked at him. Finally, she shrugged, and said, “Whatever.