Alan seemed to forget that he had started a pot of coffee. He turned to George abruptly and said, “If we’re going to get that pump of yours thawed out and working by evening, we’d better get going.” He hurriedly left the room, heading to the basement to pick up his tool box.
George seemed bewildered by this sudden rush to get out of the house, but he picked up the patched denim jacket that he had slung over the back of his chair, and stood up.
David, however, didn’t seem at all inclined to leave. “Hey,” he said to Kelly, “What about that coffee your dad’s making?”
“I’ll get you some, if you want to stay for a while.” Kelly wanted him to stay, wanted to find out more about what he had seen in the barn that morning, but she didn’t want to talk about the ghost in front of George and her father. “Unless you have to help them with the pump.”
“I wouldn’t know which end of a pump the water comes out of,” David confessed. “They won’t let me help with that type of work.”
“Sure,” George said to David, “Sure. You stay here where it’s nice and warm and drink your coffee and think of your poor old uncle freezing his fingers off down in the well-house.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can, Kelly,” called Alan as he headed out the front door. “Perhaps you should show David that picture you drew last night?”
“Picture?” asked David. “You’re an artist?”
“Not really,” she said, “At least, not yet. I draw a bit, and I’m going to go to art school when I graduate, but I’m not nearly as good as my mother.”
“Where is your mother?” asked David. “I haven’t seen her yet.”
Something inside Kelly turned over and hurt. “She’s dead,” she answered. “For almost three years now.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I mean, Uncle George didn’t say anything. I’m sorry, Kelly.” He reached a hand out, as if he were going to touch her, then quickly drew it back. “I ... I guess I should head out now, maybe I can help with that pump or go talk to the cows or something.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Kelly. “There’s nothing wrong in you not knowing. Don’t worry about it.” She clenched her jaw, biting down hard on the hurt inside her, and poured David’s coffee. “Besides,” she went on, determined to change the subject, “besides, I think we should talk about what you saw this morning.”
“What I saw? Oh, the kid in the barn. Well, I guess she must be staying with someone around here and just wandered over. Maybe she wanted to see the cows. Maybe she wanted to watch me try to milk the cows. From the way everyone talks, that’s a very funny sight.”
“Your uncle was right, David,” said Kelly. “There isn’t a child under six closer than the reserve, a few miles down the road.”
“Who was it then?” asked David, now serious. “She wasn’t lost, was she? I didn’t mean to ignore her, but. . .”
“Maybe she is lost,” said Kelly, “but you couldn’t have helped her find her way home.”
“What do you mean?” David’s coffee sat untouched on the table. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t laugh, David, just answer me. Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Ghosts?” David looked startled. “No. I don’t. Or at least I don’t think I believe in them. I’ve never seen one.”
“You saw one this morning, David,” Kelly said softly. “You saw a ghost this morning.”
Chapter 5
About an hour later Kelly and David still sat at the kitchen table, now littered with dishes. Kelly, realizing that she hadn’t yet eaten, had produced the pancake mix, but David had actually done the cooking.
“I’m good at pancakes,” he said. “Look, no matter what the recipe for the mix says, you always add an egg, and just a bit less water. Like this.” He had taken the bowl and mix out of her hands and made himself at home in the kitchen. Kelly had cooked the bacon, only burning it slightly, and located the syrup in the back of a cupboard, while David wielded the flipper on the pancakes. And they were good, Kelly had to admit, better than the ones she usually made.
Now they sat, the sticky plates pushed to one side, staring at Kelly’s picture of the little ghost.
“I still can’t believe it,” David said. “In spite of what you’ve told me, I still can’t really believe it. I always thought that ghosts would be tall white things in sheets, not a little girl looking so real. Maybe we’re having some sort of hallucination.”
“I don’t know, David, but I don’t see how that could happen. I mean, we don’t have much in common, the three of us who have seen her—you, me and Miss Overton.”
“Maybe we should work on developing more things in common then,” he said.
Kelly grinned at him, wickedly. “Oh, you mean you would like to get to know Miss O.? Well, I’ll be pleased to introduce you.”
“Come on, you know what I mean.” David looked down at the picture again, hiding his eyes from her. “You and I are the only two around here who aren’t over thirty or under ten. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been lonely even in the short time I’ve been here. Aren’t you too? Lonely?”
At his direct question, Kelly’s grin faded. “Yes. I guess I am, but I’m at school most of the time, and when I get home there’s housework and dinner to get ready, and my painting—and Dad, when I get to see him.”
“Well, if you cook all the meals the way you did that bacon, maybe you should spend less time on your painting and more in the kitchen! Your art work is good, but I’m not so sure about your cooking.”
Kelly was thinking quickly, searching for a reply to David’s remark about her cooking, when, for the third time that day, the doorbell rang. She went to answer it and returned to the kitchen with the Terpen twins trailing behind her.
“David, this is Trisha and Tommy. They live two houses down.”
The twins stared at David, then looked at each other and giggled. “Is he your boyfriend, Kelly?” asked Trisha.
“Trisha!”
David looked seriously at the twins. “Of course not,” he said. “People with red hair sometimes have very bad tempers. Do you think she’d be a good girlfriend.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Tommy. “Kelly’s okay, I guess, if you like girls. I think girls are dumb.”
“They are not,” said Trisha.
“They are too.”
“Are not!”
“Are too!”
Kelly stepped in before the argument could become physical, something that happened frequently when the twins had a disagreement. “Come on, you two, stop that. Do you want some orange juice?”
“Sure. You got any pancakes left?” Tommy had inspected the sticky plates and deduced what had been served for breakfast.
“Yeah. We like pancakes, but Mom never makes them.” Trisha wiped syrup from the edge of a plate and popped her finger in her mouth.
“There’s lots of mix left,” David said, standing up. “I’ll make you