Page 45

housekeeping.'

"'He ain't much at anything,' Steve muttered.

'Hungry?' he asked.

"'Sure,' I said and we went about preparing our

dinner. He was excited about the pie. I told him my

granny had made the crust. It was her specialty and no

matter how much I tried, I couldn't get it as good. He

liked hearing me talk about Granny, how she fidgeted

over her home cooking, her stories about her own

mother and father, and of course, her famous sayings. "When I asked him about his grandparents, he

could only remember his father's daddy. He had never

seen his mother's parents; they had both died before

he was five or six.

"I wondered why he didn't have any brothers or

sisters and he said, 'Just luck.'

"I was going to laugh when I saw how serious

he was about it.

"'Can you imagine if there was another kid in

this house, especially younger, like Rodney? You know what things have been like for him,' he said and we sat and talked a little more about life with an alcoholic for a parent. That's when I realized even more that we really were birds of a feather," I said and

paused.

"Why?" Jade asked. She didn't want to give me

a moment's rest, it seemed. Why was she so damn

anxious to hear all my story? I had come this morning

thinking they all wouldn't be interested in my poor

girl's life, and they seemed more interested in me than

in Misty and maybe themselves.

"Because of the feelings he had about it, the

kind of things he thought.

"'I used to feel like smashing things,' he told

me. 'My father was drunk so much, I was sure he