Lily of the Springs by Carole Bellacera

Author:Carole Bellacera [Bellacera, Carole]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Carole Bellacera
Published: 2012-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPER TWENTY-FOUR

I slept on the couch that night, even though Jake tried several times to cajole me into bed. I was just furious at him—not so much about the cut on my forehead, because I knew he hadn’t meant for me to get hurt when he pushed me. No, I was spit-fire mad at him for destroying my Elvis record. That was just out and out meanness, and as far as I was concerned, it took the cake.

Last night as I’d laid there on that couch, staring grimly into the darkness, it was all I could do to keep myself from gathering up a stack of Jake’s Hank Williams albums and take that hammer of his and smash them to smithereens. But then that would make me just as bad as him, wouldn’t it?

Sometime before daylight, I’d finally fallen asleep, only to be awakened just after seven by Debby Ann’s listless wails. Stumbling to the baby’s room, still half-asleep, I cast an evil glare at the closed bedroom door, and murmured a curse under my breath. What magic power made a man able to sleep through the racket of a crying child?

I tried to force a few spoonfuls of oatmeal into Debby Ann who managed to be even more stubborn than usual, defiantly turning her wispy blonde head to avoid the spoon coming at her. And when I did get a spoonful of cereal in that sweet rosebud of a mouth, the kid would stare me right in the eye and spit it out. The third time it happened, I gave up, washing her face with a wet cloth, none too gently and without a smidgen of guilt, and took her out of the high chair. Placing her on her feet on the floor, I plugged her mouth with what she’d wanted all along—her ba-ba—which the baby doctor had sternly advised me to start weaning her from at the last check-up.

“Fine with me if you’re still sucking on that thing when you get to high school,” I muttered, watching grimly as Debby Ann parked her butt on the floor, and began to suck enthusiastically, her tiny hands clamped on the bottle.

I sighed. “You’re just as strong-willed and stubborn as your daddy, aren’t you?”

Debby Ann’s big brown eyes watched me as she drank from the bottle. She sure was a pale little thing, her fine hair so light it practically blended into her porcelain face. Her dark eyes looked like a couple of raisins embedded in an unbaked cream puff.

“You sit right there and drink your bottle,” I told her. “I’m going to get your daddy up. If I can’t sleep, I don’t see why he should.”

Besides, he had shelves to get up. I’d be darned if I let him make a liar out of me. Them shelves better be up by the afternoon, or I’d know the reason why.

I opened the door to the bedroom. “Jake? You need to get up now.”

No response. I stepped into the room. The blinds

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