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head. The smell of the elk surrounded her. She whispered to him, “I won’t forget you,” and then she jumped out one of the doors at the head of the trailer.
    Her mother was standing right there and said, “Good job, Meg.”
    “How’d you learn to do that?” Jim asked her.
    “You need to think like an elk, that’s all,” Meg told him, and then left the men to secure the trailer. She didn’t want to watch them drive away. She ran to the house and went inside.
    She went to her room and sat on the floor. She would never have another elk in her life like Harvey. She hated it when she got left behind. A hole where the elk had stood in the barn every day for the last week grew in her mind until it sucked up the whole universe. Tears started leaking out of her eyes and running down her face. The sadness in her was like a stream that wouldn’t stop.
    Meg heard her mother come to her doorway. “Meggy, you were great.”
    “I was not.” Meg couldn’t keep the sob out of her voice.
    Her mother knelt by her and put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s the matter, honey?”
    Meg pulled away from her mother’s touch and wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m not honey, and you know what the matter is. Another thing gone. Everything I love goes away. I hate it.” Meg couldn’t help herself as the words tore out of her mouth in a mean way.
    “It must seem like that sometimes.”
    “Mom, leave me alone. I don’t need your words of wisdom. You don’t understand. I need to be by myself right now and do it my own way.”

CHAPTER 7
    I just picked up the injunction. I’ll swing by and get you,” Claire Watkins said to Margaret over the phone.
    “Thank you so much. I’ll be standing at the end of the driveway, waiting,” Margaret said.
    Margaret was finishing up the laundry—folding Mark’s clothes—but all she could think about was the auction. It would have to stop. Margaret just hoped they got there before anything important had been sold.
    She checked the clock again: 11:47. It was only two minutes later than the last time she’d looked. The auction was supposed to start at noon. The shirt in her hands was crumpled into a ball instead of folded to be put away. She snapped it out straight and then started to smooth it with her hands.
    Having been to a couple of hundred farm auctions in her life, she knew the schedule by heart. The first two hours—from ten to noon—would be devoted to letting the crowd mill around all the stuff. The farm implements and machinery would be out in the barnyard, and some of the big pieces of furniture would be left in the house, but since it was a nice day a lot would have been carted outside. Most of the small items would be boxed and sold as a lot—the linens, the silver, the china, the geegaws.
    She could picture it so clearly. Her neighbors would be walking around her parents’ farm, poking and pawing all the trappings of her family’s life together. Margaret wanted to throw up.
    Mark was worrying her. He had gone out to the barn to finish milking the goats. He didn’t even want to talk about what was going on. He seemed ready to snap at any moment.
    She could tell the problems with Patty Jo were eating Mark up inside. He was drinking a bit more than she had ever noticed him doing before. During the day he threw himself into work, but at night he was restless. That’s when he would start to drink. She wouldn’t have minded so much if it would calm him down, but often it made him worse. He would get belligerent with her and then often leave. She didn’t know where he was going at night.
    She tried to push Mark out of her head. He would be fine when they got this situation resolved.
    Margaret couldn’t help thinking about all the little things of her mother’s she would like to have: her sewing kit, the quilt she had made, the old doll that sat in the china cabinet. Come to that, the china cabinet.
    She bent the sleeves of the shirt in toward the middle and then folded