Free The House on Malcolm Street by Leisha Kelly

independent sort who wouldn’t appreciate me thinking like that, at least not out loud.
    “May I climb in the tree, Mommy, please?” Eliza looked up with her shiny eyes twinkling in the sun.
    Before I could answer, my father’s red face and roaring voice came to mind again. “You knock another apple down outta that tree, an’ I’ll be knockin’ you out of it!” he’d yell. “My customers won’t buy bruised apples!”
    “Would you mind if her climbing shook a few more from the tree?” I asked Marigold, just to be sure.
    “Lord, no. I want most of ’em picked so they’ll keep a while, but drops’ll cook up good as the rest. Besides, I’ve got you here to help me cut them now.”
    Eliza was itching to get into that tree, and I wouldn’t have let her if there’d been any boys about. But there was not so much need to be ladylike on a job like this with only Marigold and me with her. I let her try, knowing how much I’d loved tree climbing when I was little, despite my mother’s cautions and my father’s scolding. I used to think I was trying to be like the son my father had lost, but that couldn’t be Eliza’s reason. Her baby brother had been far too little for climbing, and we’d lost him before we’d even had time to speak with her about the sorts of things a bigger boy might do.
    She didn’t try to go very high. Content to sit on the lowest branch, she leaned to pluck the apples within reach. I gave her a little basket with a handle she could hook over her arm.
    “I’m helping, Mommy,” she said with a smile.
    “And a fine helper you are,” I replied.
    It was a happy moment, but I found it suddenly invaded by my bitter thoughts. If everything were truly right in this world, Father would be a kindly sort who’d love having a six-year-old join him in his orchard. We could stay at his farm, helping with the peak of harvest, and perhaps even enjoy our time as a family. But Father had never wanted my help, as a child or as an adult. And if he cared at all for Eliza, he’d scarcely shown it. That was nothing but a dead and empty dream.
    I fetched the ladder. We were here now, so there was no point thinking of anywhere else. Eliza was smiling, Marigold truly did need us, and we would do the best we could.
    Marigold picked busily at the low branches while I reached as high as I possibly could on the ladder. I carried my own baskets down, so she wouldn’t have to reach up for them and then hand me empty ones.
    I had just stepped from the ladder when another train went through town. I jumped at the sound and Marigold smiled.
    “There’s no more than six or seven a day,” she told me. “You get used to it.”
    I took a deep breath. Hopefully I could. But this one didn’t bother me much. Perhaps I was already getting used to it. Four blocks , I told myself. I’ll not be able to see it, and it could not reach us even if it jumped the tracks.
    Maybe something about working with Marigold made my train anxiety fade into the background a little. It really wasn’t hard at all to turn it from my mind and focus with renewed energy on the work at hand.
    We filled five baskets in practically no time, and I thought Marigold must surely be getting tired. So I went to the house for a chair and a paring knife so she could do sit-down work. But she wouldn’t use them till we’d filled most of the baskets and started in on the buckets and boxes. By that time, she admitted she’d have to sit. Her legs just couldn’t keep on.
    So Marigold sat and peeled and cored the bruised apples that I brought to her. Eliza shifted several times in the tree in order to reach just a few more apples, but most of the fruit was hanging way outside of her reach. I let her stay in the tree anyway. It had occurred to me that she could fall, but she stayed low and seemed far more cautious than I’d ever been, so I had little to worry about. I just kept picking, bucket after bucket, at the same time looking around the yard a bit. A