Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

several trips to hand dishes to Mary.
    “You haven’t said anything about Mr. Day,” Alafair finally noted.
    Phoebe gave her a furtive glance. “I don’t know what to say, Ma. It’s an awful thing.”
    Alafair considered this comment. It was very much in character for Phoebe, who was by far the tenderest of all of Alafair’s brood. “It’s beginning to look like John Lee may be in trouble,” Alafair finally said, in her best conversational tone. “He shouldn’t have run off. Should have stayed around and explained himself. It’d look a whole lot less suspicious.”
    Phoebe had finished clearing the table. Blanche and Sophronia had scampered off somewhere and the other girls were still involved in the kitchen. There was a lot of noise. Phoebe sat down. “Maybe he felt like he had to run off, Ma. He had fought with his daddy and all.”
    “I can see where he might want to hide in the first heat of things, but if he’d thought about it, he’d have seen it looks bad.”
    For an instant, Phoebe looked as if she might cry. “Things always are bad for him,” she said. “I don’t think he’d expect much different.”
    Phoebe’s response took Alafair by surprise, and she swallowed hard, touched. “Well, honey,” she finally said, “if it makes you feel any better, I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems unlikely to me that that poor boy did it. If he did shoot his father, it wouldn’t be very smart of him to hang around home for three days waiting for a thaw.”
    Phoebe bit her lip and nodded, but didn’t answer.
    “You want me to make you some chamomile tea?” Alafair asked, falling back on a practical action she often took for her daughters’ discomforts, physical and emotional.
    Phoebe smiled. “Thank you, Mama.” She hesitated, then continued, “You think it would be all right if I made up a pallet and slept here in the kitchen for a couple of nights?”
    Alafair didn’t think that a particularly odd request. The family’s normal sleeping arrangements had the parents in the smaller north bedroom, the boys on cots in the parlor, and the girls in the larger south bedroom. Martha and Mary shared a bed, as did Alice and Phoebe. The younger girls shared cots that trundled under the big beds during the day. Often, when one of the kids was sick, Alafair allowed her the luxury of privacy by fixing up a makeshift bed by the stove in the kitchen.
    “I think that would be all right,” Alafair decided. Not that any of the sisters would mind. Ruth, Blanche, and Sophronia would immediately take advantage of the vacancy by jumping into the big bed with Alice, who would spend most of the night devising story and deed to scare them silly and irritate the older girls with muffled shrieks and scuffles. “In fact,” Alafair continued, “I’ll be going out to the Day place tomorrow to take some food out to them. I don’t see anything wrong with your staying home and helping me, just for the day. Would you be willing to do that?”
    A look a relief and gratitude passed over Phoebe’s face and she leaned over to give her mother a hug. “Thank you, Mama,” she said.
    ***
    Later that evening, the family gathered in the parlor by the dim light of kerosene lamps to spend some time entertaining one another before bedtime.
    Shaw melted a glob of butter in the bottom of one of Alafair’s soup pots and popped an enormous batch of popcorn on the pot belly stove. He and Charlie-boy took turns shaking the pan and shaking the pan until every last kernel of corn was popped. The popcorn was meted out in bowls, and while the family snacked, Martha and Mary alternated reading from a favorite book of poems.
    “Listen my children, and you shall hear
    Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere…”
    Alafair sat in her rocker by the window, listening with one ear as Martha regaled the family with her tales of working for Mr. Bushyhead at the bank and Ruth picked out a couple of tunes on the old upright piano. She tried to observe Phoebe without being too conspicuous about it. The girl seemed as engrossed in Martha’s story as the rest of her siblings, and not overly nervous or upset. The idea that was niggling at Alafair, that Phoebe knew something she wasn’t telling about this whole Harley Day affair, must just be her imagination. Phoebe was not good at being devious. Not like Mary or Alice or Charlie, the imps.
    Of course, love makes one bold.
    Alafair stopped rocking. She urgently tried to remember what she had