“Just something I got for you out of the attic,” Lynn said. “It’s no big deal.”
Lucy ran her fingers over the soft, red fur, the hard nubs of plastic that formed his little black nose and eyes. “Was he yours? What’s his name?”
“I just called him Dog.”
“Dog,” Lucy repeated, pinning back his floppy ears and releasing them to fall down into her face. “You’re not good at naming things.”
“I had a real dog once,” Lynn said. “He answered to ‘Dog’ just fine, and didn’t seem to mind it.”
Lucy tossed the stuffed animal into the air. “What happened to him?”
“That,” Lynn said, snapping her hand out neatly to snatch the dog before he landed, “is not a good story.”
Lucy stretched her thin arms out, fingers wiggling for her gift. “Can I call him Red Dog?”
“Call him what you want,” Lynn said, letting him fall to the little girl’s chest, where she grabbed him in a bear hug. “He’s yours now.”
Lucy snuggled back under the covers, taking the newly rechristened Red Dog with her. Two fingers pinched onto one ear and rubbed in an ever-slowing circle as she drifted back down into sleep.
“Can I ask you something?”
Lucy jerked awake. “Mmph?”
“Am I good-looking?”
The child nodded, her gold curls bobbing up and down on the pillow. “Verry purty,” she mumbled.
Minutes of silence filled the basement, broken only by the sound of Lucy’s even breathing. “Huh,” Lynn finally said to herself. “Who’d’ve guessed?”
Eleven
A killing frost had fallen, turning the morning dew into a deadly covering of ice that stilled the insect voices. The sharp morning air ripped into Lynn’s lungs as she zipped her coveralls up to her neck. Beside her, an unrecognizable Lucy trotted loyally along, an oversized hat pulled down to her eyebrows, a scarf wrapped up to her nostrils.
“What’re we doing today?” Her voice was muffled by the layers of fabric Lynn had covered her with before trusting her frail skin to the outdoors.
“Gotta get wood inside. You sit if your feet start hurting you.”
Lucy had proven less a hindrance and more a help as the days went by. Her endless energy and curiosity could be put to good use, Lynn had soon realized. Small jobs, like gathering little bits of kindling and checking the supply of sanitized water, had soon bored her, and Lynn began trusting her with more work. Her feet were still healing from cutting out the overgrown toenails, something that had been less of struggle than Lynn had anticipated.
She’d asked Stebbs to assist, expecting crying, pleading, and a general struggle from Lucy. Her request that he hold the child down while she did the cutting had been met with a raised eyebrow and the suggestion that they try a less violent route first. After his patient, carefully worded explanation to Lucy, she had submitted gracefully to his touch, wincing and burying her head in Lynn’s lap for the worst moments. There had been tears, but no wailing. The throb after the surgery Lynn had dulled with some aspirin, after struggling with the cap. It hadn’t been removed in years.
Lynn had debated allowing Lucy to help her haul wood in. One dropped log could send the child into a world of pain. But Lucy insisted that boredom was worse than a bloody toe, finally consenting to wearing three pairs of socks inside of an old pair of Lynn’s boots. She plodded along beside Lynn as they made their way to the pole barn, curious and comfortable.
“All right,” Lynn said as she shoved the rolling door open. “I’ve got a wagon in here you can drag around the yard, gather all the little sticks, things we can use for kindling if our coals go out downstairs.”
Lucy’s brows knitted and she stopped in her tracks. “That’s not a new job. You said you had a new job for me.”
“You get to use the wagon now.” The flash of inspiration had struck Lynn on her water-gathering chores the evening before when she’d spotted her old red wagon, rusting in the dark corner.
“That’s an old job, just with a new wagon. I wanna help you with the wood.”
“You are helping with the wood,” Lynn insisted as she tugged on the handle to dislodge the wagon from its ancient resting place. “Kindling is wood.”