Free Sugar Plums for Dry Creek & At Home in Dry Creek by Janet Tronstad

it’s cleared up, I’ll hope to see you this Sunday. It’s the last Sunday be fore Thanksgiving, and the kidswill be decorating candles and thinking about what they’re going to say at the service we have the night of Thanksgiving.”
    â€œI heard about that—”
    â€œIt’s a wonderful thing for families to do together,” Mrs. Hargrove said as she turned to smile at Bobby and Amanda, who had just reached them.
    Amanda was holding the pink costume out for Mrs. Hargrove to see.
    â€œOh, that’s beautiful,” Mrs. Hargrove told the little girl.
    Watching Amanda talk with the older woman made Judd decide he would take the kids to Sunday school this Sunday. It would do Amanda good to talk to more people, and she certainly seemed to have no trouble chat ting with Mrs. Hargrove. It would be good for Bobby, too, to meet some more kids.
    The only one it might not be good for, Judd decided, was him self. He would be a fish out of water in church. Maybe he could leave the kids at the church and then walk over to the café and have a cup of coffee. Now that sounded like the way to do this. Although, now that he thought of it, he couldn’t remember if the café was open on Sundays. He thought Linda went to the church in Dry Creek, too, so she probably didn’t open the café that day.
    For the first time, Judd wished Dry Creek were a bigger town. In a place like Billings, or even MilesCity, no one would notice who was going to church and who wasn’t. They probably had coffee shops that were open on Sunday mornings as well.
    Maybe he’d just have to sit in his pickup for the hour or so that the kids were in side. Yeah, he could do that.

Chapter Seven
    J udd still hadn’t talked to the sheriff about it all, but it was Saturday, and it had been two days since Judd had learned that the kid’s father had been arrested. Hearing that news had surprised Judd enough. But what he was looking at now made that surprise go clear out of his head. He figured pigs were going to start flying down the street of Dry Creek pretty soon. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Right there, in the middle of Lizette’s practice room, was Pete Denning trying to do a pirouette.
    The man’s Stetson hat was thrown on the floor, and his boots were next to it. He wore one white sock and one gray sock, but both of his feet were arched up in an effort to hold him on his tip toes.
    â€œWe should start with something simpler,” Lizette was saying. She was dressed in her usual black practice leggings and T-shirt and had stopped her stretching on the practice bar to watch Pete.
    â€œNo, I saw this on TV and I know I can do it,” Pete said as he tried again to stand on his tip toes.
    The man looked like a pretzel that had come out of the ma chine wrong.
    â€œI see you got an other student,” Judd said. The kids and Charley were in the other room get ting out of their coats and into their dancing slippers. Judd should have positioned him self in his usual chair out side on the porch, but he’d seen Pete, and that had changed everything.
    â€œIt’s a free country,” Pete said.
    Judd lifted his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t say any thing.”
    â€œYeah, but I know what you’re thinking.”
    Judd chanced a quick look at Lizette. She’d paused mid way through a stretch, and the curve of her back was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He certainly hoped the cow boy didn’t know what he was thinking.
    Pete didn’t wait for Judd to answer. “You’re thinking that a Montana man like me wouldn’t know what to do with a little culture.”
    â€œI didn’t say that.”
    â€œBut you would be wrong even to think it,” Pete continued with out listening. Pete was looking at Lizette, too, now. Lizette had stopped bending andwas stretching her arm along the practice bar. A faint sheen of perspiration made her