Page 8 of Second Start: Family
“Precisely— I know,” Hall interrupted Lizzie. Crafty whimpered pitifully to be let inside, apparently considering the request safe now. “Let’s put it this way — who was holding the door open at the time Benji went from outside to inside.”
Dan looked smug, while Molly and Lizzie looked at each other.
“Me,” Lizzie admitted.
“Then you get the paper towel.” Crafty picked up volume. “And put Benji out— No! not until you’ve cleaned up the mess, Lizzie, or he’ll track through it. Molly, go around the other way and bring in Crafty before he shatters the windows. And you, Dan—” His oldest turned a look of outrage on his father. “—watch your language.”
Ten minutes later, Hall was finally eating a baloney sandwich over the sink as his supper.
Swallowing the last bite and washing it down with lukewarm water from the tap because nobody’d filled the ice cube trays, he became aware of Lizzie and Molly sharing one door jamb and Dan leaning on the other in the passage between the kitchen and family room. The girls stared at him expectantly. Dan tried to look bored.
“What the hell are you all doing up still?”
“You shouldn’t swear,” Molly told him. “Grandma says we should remind you because sometimes you get busy and forget.”
Dan said nothing, but Hall had no trouble reading the vindication in his eldest’s face.
“We’re notallup,” added Lizzie. “Bobby went to bed half an hour ago.”
More than an hour after his bedtime. Hall couldn’t let Bobby sleep in tomorrow, because day care on a single-parent Wyoming ranch was Bobby trailing him until his siblings returned from school.
Hall headed into the family room.
“Did you talk to Miss Otter?” Dan asked, straining for casualness as Hall passed. The boy was getting tall, past his shoulder already.
“No.” Damn, he’d totally forgotten. It made his answer harsh.
“But you saw our teacher, didn’t you?” Molly demanded.
“Isn’t Miss Kenzie wonderful?” Lizzie enthused.
He turned to his daughters, bright-faced with expectation, no sign of the tear-ravaged tragedy enacted earlier.
“I have a bone to pick with you two. Miss Kenzie’s not her name.”
They appeared identically unaffected by his accusation.
“Actually, her full name is Kenzie Deborah Smith,” said Lizzie. “I saw it on her driver’s license when she had her wallet open.”
“Then you should call her Miss Smith.” He remembered the dark-haired teacher’s words. “Or Ms. Smith.”
“That’s ordinary. And she’s not ordinary at all.”
“So we decided to call her Miss Kenzie,” Molly added comfortably.
“You decided…?” He sat on the couch with a sigh. Immediately, he lifted his rump, grabbed the half-clothed Barbie doll whose anatomical wonders had dug into his flesh, and dropped her on the floor. The doll had been an unexpected gift from their maternal aunt. A package had arrived from Annie’s sister, Naomi, out of the blue last summer, the first from her ever. “Next time, tell me the whole story before you send me off to meet somebody you don’t call by her right name.”
“But it is her name,” objected Lizzie.
“I know, but—”
“Besides,” Lizzie interrupted with ruthless logic, “you don’t listen to us most times anyway.”
He looked into the eyes of his precision-seeking daughter and felt like dropping his head in his hands and staying that way for a couple decades.
“It’s past time for all of you to be in bed.”
It wasn’t quite that simple. But before too much longer, both girls had gone up, and Dan was on his way, pausing only to deliver a parting shot. “Lizzie Borden had one thing right, you never do listen.”
