Josie and Becky greeted each other with a squeal and a hug, and Josie relieved Becky of her sleeping bag and pillow.
“We’ll drop Becky at your house Saturday night when we get back,” Lynne Doyle, Josie’s mother, said self-consciously, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m thinking around eight o’clock or so.”
Margo asked that Lynne drop Becky off at her father’s house.
“Oh, I didn’t know,” Lynne said as if surprised, then faltered. Josie hadn’t said anything about Becky’s parents splitting up. “Sure thing.” Lynne dropped her gaze.
The two adults stood in awkward silence for a moment until Lynne finally spoke again.
“Another hot one today, but at least there’s a breeze,” Lynne said, looking to the sky stripped of clouds by a hot wind. When one ran out of things to say, there was always the weather.
“Have fun, Becky,” Margo said, turning to her daughter and pulling her into a hug. “You be good and listen to Mr. and Mrs. Doyle, okay? I love you.”
“I will, love you too,” Becky mumbled, embarrassed by her mother’s display of affection. The two girls darted into the house, up the steps to Josie’s cheerful yellow room, where they dumped Becky’s sleeping bag, pillow, and overnight bag on the floor.
“What do you want to do first?” Josie asked.
“The goats,” Becky answered as an angry shout came from outside.
The girls moved to the open window to see what the fuss was about. Below them, Margo paused as she opened her car door, and Lynne pressed her hand against her forehead, salute-style, shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun. Both were looking toward the barn.
Ethan stormed out first, face set in the scowl that he seemed to wear all the time now. Close behind was their father, William. He clapped one large hand on Ethan’s shoulder, whipping him around so they were face-to-face. Other angry words were swept away by the hot breeze, but fucker was clearly heard. Margo looked uneasily over at Lynne, who smiled apologetically and murmured something about teenage boys nowadays. She had been doing that a lot lately. Ethan ineffectually swatted at his father’s hand.
“Honey,” Lynne called out and, seeing that there was company, he let his hand fall from Ethan’s shoulder. The sudden release caused Ethan to lose balance and drop to one knee. William reached down to help him up, but Ethan ignored it and got to his feet on his own. William looked over and raised his hand in greeting toward Margo. Ethan flinched as if about to be struck.
“Come on,” Josie said, pulling Becky away from the window. “Let’s go out back.” She blinked back tears of mortification. This was just a snippet of the way her father and brother had been going at it lately.
Ethan had pulled away abruptly, his transformation sudden. He stopped talking, and when he did, it was in angry, resentful grunts. He was openly defiant and refused to help out on the farm.
“Your brother called your dad a fucker,” Becky said, and just like that, the two began to giggle and couldn’t stop. One of them would gather her composure and then the other would whisper fucker, and they would collapse in another fit of laughter.
After dinner, Lynne asked Ethan to run a pie she had made over to her parents’ farm a mile down the road. “You go right over there and then come straight home,” she ordered.
Ethan rolled his eyes. “Ethan,” Lynne warned, “don’t push it.”
Before Josie could hear Ethan’s smart-aleck response, she and Becky were out the door.
Josie’s favorite spot on the farm was the big red hip roof barn. Eighty years old, it greeted Josie each morning with its broad red face. Its nose the hayloft door, its eyes the widely spaced upper windows, and its mouth the entry large enough to drive a truck through.
The barn smelled of sun-warmed sweet hay and tractor oil. It smelled of dust motes and goats. Josie filled the wooden feed bunks that ran down the center of the barn with feed. Josie filled a small bucket with pellets while Becky ran from corner to corner, searching for the mama cat and her kittens. They were squirreled away somewhere, nowhere to be found.
Josie and Becky walked back outside to where the barn opened up into a fenced area where the thirty-odd goats spent the day. When they heard the bucket bumping against her leg, the goats came running on their spindly legs. Josie and Becky reached into the bucket for the pellets and slid their hands through the fence, their palms laid flat. Becky laughed at their black caterpillar-shaped eyes and humanlike bellows.