"But nothing . . ."
"No."
"What do you have there?" he asked stepping through the doorway.
"May brought me these pictures Laura drew and gave her. She wants me to show them to Kenneth."
He saw that I had turned to the page containing the picture of him.
"I gave May that pad the week Laura died," he said, his dark eyes gone bleak, "so she would have something to cherish, but it's not the sort of thing I wanted to show everyone. I don't mind your seeing it, but Laura was very choosy about whom she would show those drawings. Nobody in school saw them, not even her art teacher, and if she wanted Kenneth to see them, I'm sure she would have shown them to him herself."
"Okay," I said, trying to hide my nervous laughter. "What's funny?"
"I thought May had done them and was bringing them to me to show her own work." I answered, though I didn't add that I thought they were pictures of me.
He signed to May, telling her she should keep the pad in her own room where it belonged. She looked disappointed, but took the pad back when I handed it to her.
"Did you deliberately pose for any of them?" I asked. It was more than just curiosity. I wanted to know what he felt like modeling for someone, but he wasn't willing to talk about it.
"For a few," he admitted. "I'm starving," he quickly added to change the subject. "Is dinner ready?"
"I think so. Did you hear about my invitation to Grandma Olivia's?"
"As soon as I walked in the door. It was the first thing Ma told me," he said.
"Why just me?"
He shrugged.
"She wants to get to know you better?"
I smiled skeptically.
"Maybe Grandma's easing up. Old age," he added with a grin.
We all went down to dinner, where I helped serve. I noticed throughout the meal that Uncle Jacob was staring at me from time to time. Finally, before we were finished, he stopped chewing, drank some water, and leaned back.
"You mean to tell me," he said as if we were still in the middle of our earlier conversation, "you've been there over a week and he hasn't mentioned nothin' about Haille?"
Cary shifted his eyes to me quickly.
"He spoke of her," I said, "but he didn't say they had been romantically involved."
"Romantically involved?" Uncle Jacob said with a laugh. He shook his head. "Romantically involved for Haille meant sneaking behind some boat house."
"Jacob!" Aunt Sara said. "Shame on you speaking of the dead that way, and especially in front of young people."
"I'm sure they've heard a lot worse," he said, glancing at me and then at Aunt Sara. "I'm just sayin' how it was."
"There's a time and place for such talk and you know it's not at the dinner table, Jacob Logan," she insisted.
He turned a little crimson at the reprimand. The tension was so thick, it felt as if we were sitting in a roomful of cobwebs. Yet I thought I knew the underlying purpose to all these questions about Kenneth and me.
"I'm sorry I'm a burden to you, Uncle Jacob," I said. "I know you would like Kenneth Childs or someone to admit to being my father so he would have to look after me," I said firmly.
"Well that isn't my whole reason, but it would be the right thing to do, wouldn't it?" He looked across the table at Aunt Sara. "The Bible tells us to suffer the children. It means our own, Sara."
"She is our own," Aunt Sara said. "God brought her for a purpose, Jacob," she retorted with more grit than I had seen or heard in her voice since first coming to their home. She looked as if she would heave a plate at him if he uttered one syllable of disagreement.