Free A Smidgen of Sky by Dianna Dorisi Winget Page A

you tend to put them up real high on a pedestal, so high they can start to seem almost perfect . . . kind of like you do with your daddy.”
    â€œI know Daddy wasn’t perfect.”
    â€œBut when you think of him, you only recollect good things, right? Like how he was funny, and brave, and a respected pilot. You probably don’t recall how impatient he got with slow drivers, or how he spanked your behind the time you threw your cup of milk off the table, or how he got cranky if I talked too long on the phone. I bet you don’t recollect any of those things.”
    I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that I remembered lots about Daddy—good and bad. But I couldn’t. I felt as though she’d sucker-punched me.
    Mama sighed. “Your daddy was all the good things you remember, Piper Lee. But he was also a flesh-and-blood person with quirks and flaws like the rest of us. And so is Tina. In fact, if you look at her track record, she’s a downright selfish person. And Ben’s afraid Ginger thinks she’s near perfect, and that if she talks to her mama and finds out she’s not, she might be real disappointed.”
    I nodded to show Mama I understood, but I knew Ginger didn’t think Tina was perfect. Especially not after finding that letter in her daddy’s box. “So is he not gonna let the two of them talk?”
    â€œI convinced him he ought to.”
    â€œIs that what you were fighting about?”
    â€œWe weren’t fighting, Piper Lee. I was just trying to help him see that if he doesn’t allow Ginger to talk to her mama, she’ll surely resent him for it.”
    Mama smiled as if everything were just fine, but once we got home, she paced from one part of the house to another. She puttered around in the bathroom for a bit, then gazed out the kitchen window for a while, then finally sat down to fix a hole in one of the aprons she wore at work.
    I spread some newspaper on the kitchen table and brought out my model ARV Super2. If I could get the wheels assembled, I’d finally be to the painting stage. But some of the parts were so tiny, they were almost impossible to work with. I used Mama’s tweezers to lift a tire and dropped on a single drip of glue, but when I tried to fix it in place, it slipped free and landed on the newspaper. I grabbed it up quick before it could stick and tried again—and again. I wished I’d stuck with the level 3 models instead of convincing Mama I was ready for a level 4.
    â€œI’m thinking now that maybe we shouldn’t have left,” Mama announced out of the blue.
    â€œWhy’s that?”
    â€œI just feel funny about walking out, leaving Ginger like I did. I think she needed me to stay.”
    â€œShe’s got Ben there.”
    â€œI know. There’s just times when a girl needs a mama around.”
    Hot pressure flowed down from the top of my head. “You talk like you’re her real one.”
    Her sharp look shamed me. “No, Piper Lee, I’m not her mother from birth. But in this past year alone I’ve been more of a mama to her than Tina ever has. Most any woman can carry a baby inside her, but it’s the one who loves you and tries to raise you up right that makes a real parent. You remember that.”
    I tried to swallow, but my throat felt all closed up, as if it were full of model glue.

11

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    T HE NEXT MORNING after breakfast Miss Claudia called me over and asked if I’d like to earn a few dollars. She led me into her bedroom and pointed to a huge plastic flowerpot full to the brim with pennies.
    â€œWow, Miss Claudia, how long have you been saving these?”
    â€œA long while now. I’ve no idea how many there are, but if you roll them for me, I’ll give you twenty percent of the total.”
    I stared at the pot and mulled things over for a minute. Rolling that many pennies would take forever and a day, but then I remembered the sonic