Free Rain by Michael Mcdowel

upbringing. Elinor gave permission, Elinor refused requests, Elinor decided what might or might not be done; Elinor bought Lilah's clothes, and paid for Lilah's pleasures. Billy watched hia daughter grow up with affection and interest, but not with the love or involvement of a parent.
    Perdido rather hoped that Miriam Caskey Strickland would conceive a child—she was nearing forty, and there wasn't much more time for her—because Perdido wanted to make bets on who would end up with it. Miriam, of all Caskeys within memory, was least likely to want to hold on to a son or a daughter if anyone were to step forward with an offer. The often-heard remark was that if it was a girl, she'd trade it for diamonds; if it was a boy, for oil-company stock.
    Perhaps that was what Miriam would have done, had she had a child. But Miriam didn't conceive, though she and Malcolm went at it with the application that Miriam brought to everything. Malcolm had been surprised by his wife's change of heart, and even went so far as to question her about it. "You didn't always want a baby, you know," he pointed out. "You said you'd use its head for a pin-cushion."
    "Married people have babies," Miriam replied, a little uncomfortably. "So I changed my mind, that's all. I decided that if I was gone go to the trouble of marrying you—and Malcolm, there never was a man who was more trouble than you—then I might as well go on and do the other thing, too." Yet no child came, and it began to look as if no child would.
    This irked Miriam. She didn't like being thwarted, and that it was her own body that was proving recalcitrant was a double insult. Malcolm tried to point out to his disappointed wife that a child was only likely to prove a burden to her. Pregnancy itself was likely to interfere with her work; the child would demand time and attention that Miriam would probably resent not giving to the mill and the oil business.
    Miriam wasn't consoled. "I could still go to the office if I got pregnant," she said. "And if once in a while I couldn't, I could tell you and Billy what to do and I suppose you would get it done. Once the child came, I'd hire a girl to take care of it." All Zaddie and Ivey's brothers had been long married, and already there was a third generation of female Sapps, just pining to be hired on by the Caskeys. "And if that didn't work out, I could always send it out to Gavin Pond Farm or over to Elinor's. They'd all leap at the chance for another baby. After all, there hasn't been a baby around here since Lilah was born."
    But Miriam still didn't conceive, and finally she was convinced by Malcolm and her own body that it would never happen. This didn't, however, lessen her desire to have a child. She looked next door, and saw how Queenie had stolen Tommy Lee away from Lucille and Grace. And when Miriam looked the other way, what she saw was Lilah Bronze, just ripe for the plucking.
    Lilah was thirteen, in the eighth grade, and was like no one so much as Miriam herself: starchly handsome, proud of her position, enamored of jewels and worldly things, slightly contemptuous of those her own age. In short, Lilah was a child after her aunt's heart. There was already a certain intimacy between them on account of Miriam's jewelry collection, which Lilah passionately coveted.
    Miriam saw no reason why she should not have Lilah for her own. Certainly, following Malcolm's arguments, that would be better than giving birth to a child herself. There was no pregnancy to worry about, no infancy to be endured, and there was not the uncertainty of personality to contend with. She might, after all, have given birth to a child who would turn out to be just like Malcolm—or, worse, like Frances. Just because a woman had carried a child in her womb was no guarantee that she would feel any sympathy with it.
    But here was Lilah, and Lilah—to Miriam—was the perfect daughter.
    Once she had come to this conclusion, and without having conferred with Malcolm,