Free The Star Garden by Nancy E. Turner Page A

stairs threatening to hang Zack out a window. Pretty soon, down they both came, Zack just ahead of his brother, when he tripped and went nose over like a barrel down the stairs. He landed at the bottom with a thud and sprawled, unmoving. Truth and Story came on his heels, with Honor a few steps behind. Those three were cheering and hollering like wild coyotes.
    Ezra ran to Zack, shouting, “Get up, you. I’m gonna make you eat a pound of dirt. Just you blink one eye, you yellow dog. Just you breathe one snort.”
    The rest of us watched in horror. “Zack?” everyone called at once. The boy didn’t move. Albert went to him. “Son?” he said.
    Zack opened one eye. “Don’t let him pound me, Papa. I didn’t know he’d stuck his big dumb head up the chimney. I was doing my chores like I was told.”
    Ezra said, “Ah, I knew he was playing possum. You bum.”
    “There’ll be no calling names,” Albert said. “Now, boys—”
    Zack crossed his arms and said, “He was owl-hooting up the chimney like he was being some ghost.”
    “Was not.”
    “Was, too. He said Uncle Jack’s ghost was walking around up in that attic and if I moved the dust, the ghost would get me. Then he starts—”
    “You were bragging you didn’t care about being up there. Bragging’s a sin.”
    “—hooting up the chimney like he was a ghost. The only way to see a ghost is when they walk through dust, so I dusted him.”
    Albert held both of them by the collars of their shirts. He said, “Ezra, go outside and shake that out of your hair. Then you sweep every speck of dust you spread through this house and finish the attic yourself.” Albert went on, jostling Zack by his neck, “You apologize to Aunt Sarah, then get in that kitchen, find the stove black and start painting that stove. And don’t you spill one single drop.”
    I turned around to keep from laughing at their antics, but I kept a strong face while Albert scolded. A couple of men were busy tying netting over an oil painting of a river where cows grazed under a big tree. Even they were laughing.
    In the midst of it all, I spied Blessing sitting at the top of the stairway. I went toward her, but she hopped up and ran for one of the bedrooms. She closed the door before I got there. I stopped outside the portal, wondering what I should do. Blessing had been her mother’s darling. Her father’s, too, I’d reckon. Far too headstrong and willful for a child. I thought of Harland hiring Rachel. An inexperienced girl would have her hands full with this bunch. Far as I could see it wasn’t the lack of a governess that caused them to be sassy and spoiled. My brother had put aside his responsibility for rearing them because it was easier to see them through eyes of pity than courage.
    “Blessing?” I said, opening the door. “I want to talk to you.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” came a little voice. She was seated on a rocking horse, staring out the window.
    “Well, that’s not the reaction I expected, after you ran away from me just now.”
    “Poppy said I have to say ‘yes, ma’am’ to you for my own good, or I’ll go to hell when I die.”
    “Ah.”
    “ Poppy says we have to live in your house now and we should be thankful.”
    “Are you thankful?”
    “I want to go home to our own house. Mommy’s there waiting for us. She doesn’t know where to find us, or she’d have come. I don’t want to live in
your
old house. It’s too far for her.”
    I sat down on the window seat next to her. She turned her head and stared out the window in another direction. I said, “You know your house burned down. Remember the earthquake?”
    “No.”
    “Remember how sick your mommy got? Remember she was in bed in that awful tent and then you went with her in a train to Chicago, waiting for her to get well?”
    “There wasn’t anything to eat.”
    “I know.”
    “Poppy said you came to take us to a safe place. To save Mommy. Where did you put her?”
    “Blessing, you know your