The Hunters' Girl by Barb Hendee

Author:Barb Hendee [Hendee, Barb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barb Hendee; N.D. Author Services [NDAS]
Published: 2020-05-19T20:00:00+00:00

The Hunters’ Girl

Chapter Six:

The Empath

Over the following week, some of Cooper’s worry eased as Beth became more and more a part of their daily lives. Lee had always wanted to put in a vegetable garden. For some reason, he liked the idea of growing their own tomatoes, potatoes, onions, and sugar snap peas. But neither he nor Cooper knew a thing about gardening. Although Lee never mentioned this to Beth, one morning, she brought them to an open area out back of the house and told them she knew how to plant and tend vegetables. That afternoon, they all drove down to Aberdeen together so that Lee could rent a rototiller and Beth could buy starters and seeds.

They prepped the soil and planted a garden.

Lee was pleased and said he couldn’t wait for home grown tomatoes.

She cleaned and cooked and did the laundry, even when they told her not to. In the evenings, they played board games or watched movies from the DVD collection. It appeared she hadn’t seen almost any movies, so it was enjoyable to introduce her to films they both liked—although Lee’s tastes tended to lean toward war stories and Cooper preferred westerns or science fiction. She liked all three.

She was the perfect housemate.

Only two things troubled Cooper.

First, one morning when he woke up early, he went upstairs to see if Beth or Lee wanted him to get the coffee started, and he was alarmed to find her room empty. Over the past few days, they had been divesting it of engine parts and working on turning it into more of a “room” for her, but the bed had been stripped down to the sheets and she was not there.

He hurried to tell Lee and then paused in the doorway. Lee was asleep in his bed, and Beth was asleep on the floor, directly beneath him, on a makeshift bed of her quilt and blanket. Had she had a bad dream or maybe just a bad night?

Later in the day, he caught Lee alone and asked him.

“No,” Lee answered. “She does that every night. She waits until she thinks I’m asleep, and then she comes in. I don’t think she can sleep in a room alone yet.”

She was too frightened to sleep alone in a room when she knew Lee was right next door? Lee did not seem bothered by this, but it worried Cooper. He’d thought she was improving… but maybe not.

The other thing that troubled him was her infallible ability to know exactly what they wanted to eat or how they might wish to pass the time. Three days after their meeting with the vice principal, they were home, and Beth was making lunch. Cooper walked to the counter to help her carry plates to the table.

She pointed to the nearest plate and said, “That o… one is yours. The other is for L… Lee.”

As she was making turkey sandwiches with sliced apples on the side, he didn’t see how it mattered.

But she picked up his phone, typed in a few sentences, and handed it to him.

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