«Listen honey, you forget all about that school this morning. They'll understand you missing a couple of classes. I'm gonna fix you a nice hot breakfast just like I used to do when you was a baby. And then you can tell ol' Clara all about it, 'ya hear?» She did not receive an answer, but when the elderly woman turned from her dishes, Lucy had her face buried in her hands and it was plain to see she was crying.
* * * * *
You could always hear David coming long before you saw him; his late- fifties MG had not seen a muffler without holes in more years than anyone could remember. How he managed to keep the thing on the streets was a puzzlement to everyone who knew him or the car. David had the sort of looks that usually draw small-town cops like sugar draws ants: long hair, a Mexican-bandito mustache. And always the latest in freaky clothes. But somehow he managed to elude them, for his racing green MG was almost an institution on the streets between Valley Farms and Alexandria. He never drove his car into the city; because of thieves, he said, but most people suspected it was because the D.C. cops would be less likely to put up with that awful brraaappp!
Lucy Barrett remembered the exact day she first met David; the exact day, the hour, the minute, all of it. It was the night Kate first brought Jerry home with her. Oh, sure, she knew they had been seeing each other. Everyone in Valley Farms knew by that time. But at least until then she had had the decency to keep him out of their home. Her father's home!