Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky Page B

didn’t want to destroy the paper by handling them too often. Then she would read bits to Lara, and tell her the history, the battle raging over slavery in the Kansas Territory, what the women did, how the Delaware Indians, who used to live north of the Kaw River, helped the anti-slavery settlers. Susan would write notes to herself on the edges of her commonplace book, almost as if she were communicating with Abigail.
    Susan also put her own family’s stories into her commonplace book, the clippings about the co-op market that ran in the Douglas County Herald, or the time Chip’s home run won the Northeast Kansas Little League tournament. “A hundred years from now, your granddaughter will want to know how we were living, how we faced up to the challenges, just like we want to know about what Abigail did,” Susan explained to Lara.
    Lara couldn’t imagine that anyone would find her life as interesting as a pioneer’s. How could playing basketball or working on the X-Farm compare to Abigail’s hacking off the head of a snake that slithered through the great gaps in the floorboards or lying on top of her baby to keep him from crying while Border Ruffians ransacked the house? But when she was ten, Lara dutifully started a diary. Sitting next to her mother at the dining-room table, she would write about her day at Kaw Valley Eagle or how she rescued the meadowlark fledglings she’d found in the cornfield.
    When she turned thirteen, the previous year, she also turned secretive. The privacy of the deserted Fremantle house became like a cloak of invisibility she could wrap around herself. Lara left her diary behind the mantel, where her mother wouldn’t be able to find it, and she would sit in the east-facing master bedroom, where there wasn’t a danger that Dad would see her flickering candle from the wheat field when she wrote in it. For the same reason, Chip and Curly hung out in the back parlor, the one used for receiving special visitors back in pioneer times.
    Tonight, she and Chip wanted to retrieve the private things they’d left here. Chip was especially worried about his stash of dope, but Lara didn’t want to lose her diary.
    When they got to the coal chute, Chip undid the cover and slid down first. He waited at the bottom for Lara, who dallied: she was terrified, and didn’t want him to know. For all the money they’d put into building a fancy house, the original Fremantles had left the basement unfinished. It had a dirt floor, where snakes and wolf spiders roamed. Lara didn’t mind them so much in the daylight, but she didn’t want to land on one in the dark.
    “Come on, Lulu,” Chip yelled up at her. “We want to make it snappy.”
    She shut her eyes, took a breath, and slid down the chute. He caught her at the bottom.
    “Point the light on the ground. I don’t want to step on a spider. And don’t fool around with me, I don’t like it,” she added as he crawled his fingers up her scalp.
    They ran up the steep stairs to the kitchen. The house smelled like bleach, from yesterday’s cleanup, but the acrid stench of cat spray underlay the bleach, making Lara sick to her stomach. Chip pushed through the swinging door into the dining room while Lara headed for the staircase to the second floor.
    Her foot was on the first step when the kitchen door opened. She couldn’t hold back a scream.
    “Hello, Lulu.”
    “Dad! What are you doing—”
    “What am I doing here? More to the point, what are you two doing here?”
    “It was a dare,” Lara said quickly. “Chip dared me that I was too chicken—”
    “Lara, don’t lie to me. If you don’t want to tell me the truth, just keep quiet.”
    Lara flushed and dug her nails into her palms so she wouldn’t cry. Chip said he was sorry, they had left a few things here.
    “So you have been breaking in here!” Jim said. “I tried talking to you about this Friday, and you were too cowardly to tell me the truth. How do you think that makes me feel? I