The Swan Keeper by Milana Marsenich

Author:Milana Marsenich [Marsenich, Milana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781948598033
Publisher: Open Books
Published: 2018-05-19T11:41:39+00:00

A long time ago Nell had told her that Lillian really meant Elizabeth. She didn’t understand that at all. Why didn’t they just name her Elizabeth then? Elizabeth meant God has sworn. She completely understood why they didn’t name her God Has Sworn. She could never imagine teachers calling to her: “God Has Sworn Connelly, please come to the front of the room.” They’d have to shorten it to something like GHS. And that, put together with her last name, made her sound like a tractor.

When she was young she was stunned to learn that God swore. Her mother cleared that up right away. She said it meant that God has promised something. She held Lilly and told her that God kept his promise to her when the swans delivered Lilly, a sweet feathery package.

Nell and Pa were so happy with her tiny feet, her little pug nose and her shiny white hair. They thanked God every day for Anna and Lilly. Nell said this mostly when Pa came home with whiskey and went to bed early. She said this through tears at first. Later, she said it after she stopped clenching her fists. Pa was a good man. She said that too.

God had kept his promise. On Lilly’s eleventh birthday, Pa had kept his. Now she would keep hers. She would find Dean Drake and she would stop him from hurting others.

She walked into the hardware store, where George waited on her. He wore a flannel shirt and green wool pants, and he’d combed his hair up and back so that it rose forward like a tiny loaf of bread. His family owned the store. She’d heard him tell Anna that he wanted to buy it one day. He stood behind a horseshoe-shaped counter with a bronze cash register at one end of it and a display of ropes at the other end. Trays of candy filled one whole side of the horseshoe.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” he asked.

“Do you have any small link chain?” she asked, countering a question with a question, something Nell was against. She put a handful of change on the counter.

“First, let’s talk about school, why aren’t you there?”

“We got out early.”

“Where’d you get the money for this chain?”

“Nell and Pa.”

George leaned over the counter and whispered, “Lilly, liars don’t get much farther than the county jail.”

She squished her face. “I earned it.”

“That’s better. How?”

“Doing chores for Nell and Pa. Do you have the chain?”

George sighed. “When?”

“Before,” she said and stopped, a word stuck in her throat. It was like a frog, wanting to hop right off of her Lilly-pad tongue. A logjam held the frog tight. That’s the problem with lying. When you tell the truth, no one believes you. “Before that man shot my parents.”

“Still convinced he did it on purpose?”

She looked aside. Canning jars stood on a shelf near the far wall. A bin of leftover seeds from spring overflowed under spices hung to dry on a piece of twine strung between two beams.

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