Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,1

chiller kicked on, ruffling Kelsa's damp bangs with a burst of cool air.

"Thank God that's over," her mother murmured, sinking back in her seat.

Kelsa was suddenly furious all over again. You were saying goodbye to your husband! How can you be glad it's over?

But they'd both been saying goodbye throughout the last four horrible months, ever since the doctor pronounced her father's cancer too far advanced for even modern medicine to cure. And Kelsa knew her mother had loved her father.

She just hadn't loved him enough.

***

One of the good things about her mother's faith was that neighbors were there for each other in bad times. When someone died, that translated to a refrigerator full of casseroles, salad, and bread.

It also meant babysitters. When the car reached their house, Mrs. Stattler was waiting to take Joby off to play with Mike. Kelsa's mother took two aspirin, since the Reformed Church didn't approve of stronger drugs unless they were necessary, and lay down for a nap.

Kelsa, with nothing to do till dinnertime, fought down an unjust desire to be angry with Mrs. Stattler too. Mrs. Stattler's willingness to add Joby to her own gaggle of boys was one of the things that made her mother's excuses such carpo.

I can't take care of a five-year-old boy and a dying man, Kel. And you have to go to school, though Kelsa knew - both of them knew - that the school would have let her skip classes for months to nurse a dying father. She could have homeschooled while she did it. She wouldn't have quit. Kelsa always finished what she started.

But her mother had refused even to ask the school. Even to try. That was what Kelsa couldn't forgive. Just as her mother couldn't quite forgive her for siding with her father when he refused to give in to what he called "the great irrational." Because he wanted to spend the final months of his life with his family, instead of being prayed over by strangers.

It was his choice.

And it wouldn't have worked, anyway.

Kelsa watched as her mother brought Joby home from the Stattlers' and programmed the multichef to heat their supper. She banished the sneaking sympathy as her mother picked at her food, and forced herself to respond to Joby's chatter about the mud city he and Mike were making. Mr. Stattler was an enthusiastic gardener, and his yard contained things that weren't often found in this suburban neighborhood, including old- fashioned dirt.

Including, Kelsa suddenly remembered, an old-fashioned posthole digger. Mr. Stattler always let neighbors borrow his tools. Would he be willing to lend Kelsa his posthole digger for this?

No, he'd be horrified by what she'd done, the lies she'd told.

Yes, he'd understand.

Or he'd think she was traumatized by grief and forgive her.

Kelsa knew that Mrs. Hennesy, her guidance counselor, had already told her mother that Kelsa "needed to talk to someone."

This wasn't so much because Kelsa's grades had fallen - no one expected your grades to be perfect when your father was dying. It was because when Mrs. Hennesy had taken her mother's side, Kelsa had stopped talking to Mrs. Hennesy.

Kelsa's mother had suggested several times that Kelsa talk to the grief counselor at the hospice. But Kelsa had hated the hospice, hated everything about it, and she'd refused.

Of course her furious refusal made her mother, and everyone else, even more concerned about her emotional stability.

If I'd agreed, if I'd appeared more stable, would they have let...

No, she knew they wouldn't. And it was too late to change anything now.

If prayer could have saved him, Kelsa's would had done the job.

Dinner lasted far too long.

Her mother put Joby to bed, reading aloud to him as she'd once read to Kelsa. It made Kelsa's heart ache, despite everything.

She was letting her mother down. But her mother had let her father down too, so life was tough all over, wasn't it?

Eventually her brother went to sleep. Not long after that her mother went to bed, exhausted by the stresses of the day despite her nap.

Kelsa lay in her own bed, waiting as the distant hum of traffic tapered off, as the breeze through her open window began to cool. She'd planned to wait, dramatically, till midnight. But by eleven fifteen she was certain her mother was sleeping, and if anyone else saw her it wouldn't matter. She'd gone on so many late-night walks with her father, eluding the heat of Utah's summer days, that even if the neighborhood patrol spotted her they'd only