Beloved Counterfeit by Kathleen Y'Barbo Page B

Carol stared at Maggie, who slowly and solemnly nodded.
    “There’s nothing a bit of practicing won’t cure,” Emilie said. “Isn’t that right, girls?”
    Both nodded, though Ruby noticed there was little enthusiasm in either response.
    “And what, pray tell, are you practicing, girls?”
    “Our names,” Carol said.
    “We spelled the wrong ones,” Maggie added.
    “The wrong. . .” Ruby felt her stomach clench. Little troubles like this would surely add up to one big problem should she be foolish enough to remain in Fairweather Key for long. Poor children. She’d asked much of them.
    Possibly too much.
    Yet what else could she do? Almost every evening since August 2, she and the girls had spent their last few minutes before bedtime going over the story of who they were and how they came to be on Fairweather Key. Not the whole truth, but a reasonable version of it with the proper protection included for the innocents.
    More than once since she’d decided to heed the preacher’s warning, Ruby had wondered if she ought to come clean with the townspeople like she’d come clean with Jesus. She’d decided, at least for now, that while the Lord would love her and the girls no matter what, the church folk likely would not. The hardest part of this realization was trying to explain it to the girls.
    What she’d ended up with was something Rev. Carter said two Sundays ago. “When you can’t tell anyone else, you can always tell Jesus.” The who and the where of their past were matters, Ruby told the girls, that were just for Jesus to know.
    Ruby turned around to give the stew a vigorous stir it didn’t really need. “You’ll stay for lunch, won’t you?” she inquired of Emilie.
    Emilie touched her shoulder. “I thought we might speak in private, Ruby.”
    “I know what that means,” Tess said. “It means you’re in trouble.”
    “Hey now,” Ruby said, pointing the spoon at Tess then cringing when she realized she’d dripped gravy down her skirt. “You’ve got troubles of your own. Unless you’d prefer we discuss your behavior right now.”
    Tess stuck out her lower lip as she reached to grasp Maggie’s hand. Maggie, in turn, linked fingers with Carol.
    “It’s stewp,” Ruby heard Tess mutter just before she yanked her sisters outside.
    “No, Tess O’Shea,” Ruby called, using both names carefully but deliberately as her temper flared, “it’s bread that you’ve ruined, and a mess you’ve left all over the kitchen floor just when I’m expecting the boarders back for lunch. Rest assured, you’ll be sorry later.”
    Ruby clamped her lips shut and reached for the towel to swipe at her skirt, the second she’d ruined since dawn. Except for her Sunday dress, she was without a clean spare.
    What was wrong with her?
    “Ruby?”
    She’d all but forgotten about Emilie. “I’m sorry you had to hear that,” Ruby said without sparing her a glance. “Sometimes Tess is a little, well, hard to handle.”
    The front door opened, and the sound of several deep voices sent Ruby scurrying into the dining room with the pot of stew. Over the next few minutes, the boarders streamed in to take their places at the table.
    Micah Tate was missing.
    Ruby shook off any thoughts of what his absence might mean as she returned to the kitchen for the coffeepot. There she found the schoolteacher hard at work, scrubbing the last of the bread crumbs off the floor.
    “When do you and the girls manage to eat?” Emilie asked without looking up.
    “I generally chase off the chickens and set a table for the girls back on the porch.” The truth was, the table was really a rain barrel with a board set across it, but it gave the girls a place of their own to take their meals without upsetting or interrupting the boarders. “I’ll fix their bowls soon as I get dessert on the table.”
    “Let me,” Emilie said.
    Ruby gave the teacher, who’d recently become the wife of the town judge, a look. “You don’t have to