Equal Access by A. E. Branson Page A

the legal aspects. Shad hemmed and hawed for a few
seconds before commenting that Dad was proposing the kind of
situation Shad would never advise a client to do: conduct business
within the family. Dad laughed and remarked, “That only applies to
normal families. We aren’t normal!” Shad got her father’s point and
agreed to take care of the paperwork.
    Dulsie always appreciated how things had a
way of working out for the best. They would be getting a bigger
farm where she could really develop her efforts to help preserve a
heritage breed. And hopefully soon after she and Shad got settled
in they could get started on a family, whereupon Dulsie would leave
her job as a financial counselor and devote her time to their home
and farm.
    Shad’s income in the last year and a half was
more modest than it had been during his first year and a half as a
staff attorney, but Dulsie had learned thrift at Mom’s knee. She
also figured his earnings would go up as Shad became more
established, whether in spite of or because of his insistence to
keep himself affordable to the middle and lower earning classes.
Dad claimed his current farm did only a little better than break
even, which was why he did side work as a self-employed handyman
and Mom worked in an accounts receivable office. It was hard for a
family farm to thrive in these modern times, but it was a lifestyle
Dulsie didn’t want to give up.
    When she moved into a dorm in Columbia for
her freshman year of college, Dulsie quickly confirmed that she
didn’t like city life. It was nice that Shad, who’d already
completed a couple of years in college and had moved into an
apartment in Columbia the previous year, was there to show her
around, run errands with her, share rides.... Dulsie had never
imagined they would wind up getting married less than two years
after that. And to think she once believed there was no way Dulsie
would ever get married before actually graduating from college.
    It was one of the arguments Mom used when
Dulsie and Shad got engaged. Dulsie was too young. And although
Dulsie agreed that only twenty years old qualified as young, she
wasn’t getting married for the same reasons as many other women who
married so youthfully. She wasn’t fleeing a bad home life or
seeking someone to help her achieve “independence” from her
parents. Dulsie and Shad were both fully aware that “young love”
was more like a stream – all bubbly and exciting but lacking in
much practical use – while mature love was more like a major river,
which might look slow and a bit dull but was the force that
contained enduring power. Shad wasn’t trying to rush her into
anything and was absolutely determined that Dulsie’s own studies
would continue unabated. They shared the same values, and Shad was
showing all the qualities of a reliable family man. After all, he
had learned to be so at Uncle Pax’s knee. Getting married just
before Shad started law school would be both convenient and
challenging, although Dulsie now admitted she didn’t fully realize
just how consuming law school would be, even for someone as bookish
as Shad. She quipped that if their marriage could survive that
first three years, it could survive anything.
    As they both scanned about the garden for a
ripe vegetable that might be hiding, Dulsie remembered how nice it
was that Shad no longer had to contemplate any free time as a
chance to catch up on lost sleep. He’d dared to also continue
working as a part-time night janitor while in law school, which
probably only “brainiacs” like him could get away with.
    “I think we got it all,” Dulsie glanced at
Shad. Because they were working in the garden on a morning that was
quickly getting hotter, they were dressed in summer work clothes.
Shad was wearing denim shorts and a light green tee shirt, and
Dulsie had on tan cotton shorts and a yellow tee shirt.
    Dulsie turned her attention toward Sadie. The
large white dog was lying outside the garden. Not