Free Stray Horse by Bonnie Bryant Page A

dinner.”
    “And she didn’t talk about it after that, did she?” Stevie said, understanding that that wasn’t very much like Lisa. “I guess she’s upset after all.”
    “Wouldn’t you be?” Carole asked.
    “That was the first thing I started thinking about,” Stevie said. “I mean, how I would feel. I didn’t like the thought at all. But I wasn’t expecting this. I mean, her parents are always so quiet and reserved.”
    “You should have seen them the other morning,” Carole said, and then she told Stevie about the incident with the milk.
    “And?”
    “It was so angry,” said Carole.
    “That doesn’t sound unusual to me at all. My brothers talk to me like that all the time.”
    “Sure, and your parents probably gripe at one another sometimes, too. I know my parents did. Every family’s different, though.”
    “You mean like we’re weird that we yell at each other all the time?” Stevie asked.
    “No. Not at all, that’s normal—for you. Lisa and I have talked about it because we both live in such quiet homes. For us, it’s just me and my dad and we sometimes get annoyedor angry with each other, like when I have to point out to him that he’s not quite as perfect as he thinks he is.” Carole smiled, thinking about her father.
    “Well, he pretty much is,” Stevie said.
    “Anyway,” Carole said, “we don’t yell at each other, and that’s normal for us. We do, however, on occasion, find it necessary to point out flaws in the other, like he has this silly notion that I spend too much time here. The point is that we say that stuff. In Lisa’s house, Lisa’s mother often criticizes her, but Lisa never returns it, and you never, ever hear her parents disagreeing about anything, even when it’s clear that they don’t agree. It’s a little weird.”
    “Yeah,” Stevie said, recalling examples of what Carole was talking about. She remembered a really awful dinner conversation about whether Mr. Atwood was going to cancel a business trip so that he could go to Mrs. Atwood’s second cousin’s niece’s wedding. Even then, it hadn’t made any sense, but nobody had raised their voices. In Stevie’s family, nobody would have had such a dumb argument in the first place, but peas would fly across the table over lost homework.
    “You know what it made me think?” Carole said. “It’s like every family has its own volume level. Your family is definitely High. Whenever anybody has something to say, they say it or yell it or even throw it. And it’s all on thesurface. Dad and I talk to each other, too—we just do it without the flying food. The real trouble comes when nobody’s talking. The Atwoods are set on Low, and until recently, like when Lisa began mentioning that her mother complained about all the traveling her father does, nobody ever snapped or complained to anybody about anything. When the volume changes, it means there’s trouble.”
    “Like the milk thing?”
    “Exactly,” said Carole.
    “And I guess what you’re saying is that that milk thing wasn’t any more about milk than Lisa’s recent speech was about driving tack.”
    “Exactly,” Carole said.
    “Oh no,” said Stevie.
    “Exactly,” Carole said again.
    “And the only thing worse than a low volume going up is when it goes to Off,” said Stevie.
    “It’s a good thing we’re here to help her,” said Carole.
    “Exactly,” said Stevie.
    M RS. A TWOOD WAS standing at the sink when Lisa came in, almost exactly the same way she had stood the night before. This time, though, she was making a small salad.
    “I’m home, Mom,” Lisa said.
    “Yes, I see, dear. Dinner will be ready in a few minutes. Why don’t you clean up and then come give me a hand?”
    “Okay,” she agreed. She hurried upstairs to shower and change. It felt very normal. Her mother usually wanted her to help. Lisa usually had to shower and change first.
    She noticed that the house seemed quiet. It wasn’t because her father wasn’t