Free Aly's House by Leila Meacham Page B

of a place to live once the farmhouse reverted to other hands. Never before had Aly realized how short of rental property Claiborne was. Every available accommodation had been snapped up by oil-field workers, and Aly was surprised that her father had not taken advantage of the situation by building apartment houses.
    “Marshall wants us to come up to New York to live with him,” Elizabeth confided, “but Sy won’t hear of it. We’d be lost in the city. What would we do with ourselves while Marshall is at work? And he doesn’t need us on his hands, not with all the mountains that son of mine intends to climb.”
    At night, lying in her bed, Aly beseeched heaven to assist her in finding a way to help the Waynes and Willy. For fear of asking for too many miracles, she did not ask to be granted Marshall’s love. She would settle for friendship, more miracle than she had ever hoped for. She was counting the days when he would be home to teach her how to ride Sampson.
    She was learning how to cook, and each day she looked forward to the meal she would help Elizabeth prepare that night. “My jeans have shrunk!” she wailed one morning as she sat down to breakfast.
    Elizabeth suppressed a smile. “Have they now?” she said, sliding a thick slice of ham onto Aly’s plate. “Have you weighed yourself lately?”
    Later that morning, Aly stepped on the scales in the birthing barn where newborn foals were weighed. Her mouth dropped open. She had gained five pounds while living with the Waynes! That evening, naked, she inspected herself in the full-length mirror attached to her closet door. The hollows of her collarbone and pelvis seemed less prominent, her hips and breasts a trifle fuller. Was it possible, Aly speculated, that only a few pounds more would give her a tolerable figure?
    “You know, you remind me of a girl I went to school with,” Elizabeth said one evening when Marshall was three days away from coming home. They were on the back porch shelling pecans gathered from the fall bounty of the two trees in the front yard.
    “How’s that?” Aly asked, her mind on the sad question of who would be gathering the nuts next year.
    “She was awfully plain.” Aly’s head popped up, but Elizabeth went on with her story. “When we were seniors, our gym instructor predicted the futures of all of us girls, and in most cases time has proved her right.”
    “What did she predict for you?”
    “That I would probably marry a farmer and live a hard but happy life, not so surprising since I was engaged to Sy at the time. But it was her prediction for Emmalou Fuller that surprised us the most.”
    “The plain one, the girl I remind you of?”
    Elizabeth nodded, her hands busy with the pecans. “She said that Emmalou was a late bloomer and would develop into a beautiful woman by her late twenties. Hers, the teacher said, was the kind of beauty that got lovelier with time, like sterling.”
    Aly’s hands were motionless. “Did that happen?”
    “Oh, yes. She moved away from Clarksville after we all graduated. Years later I ran into her in Tulsa. I hardly recognized her, she was so beautiful. She was a career woman by then, very fashionable and modern. She was thirty years old.”
    “So the gym teacher’s prediction came true.”
    “Well.” Elizabeth pondered a moment. “I have my own theory about that. Emmalou’s beauty was always there, in my opinion, but in her mind she thought herself unattractive and no competition for the other girls she considered so much prettier. She refused to do the best she could with the looks she had—sort of like children who won’t play games they cannot win. I don’t think Emmalou was exactly a late bloomer. I think she just moved away from an environment where she could not blossom.” Elizabeth looked at Aly with affection. “I have a feeling you might be an Emmalou Fuller, child.”
    Later in her room, Aly ruminated over Emmalou’s story, objectively studying herself in the