Mackinnons #02 For All the Right Reasons Read Online Free PDF Page B

last year, and the year before that.”
    “You’ll grow out of it.”
    “When?”
    “Before too long.”
    “And these freckles?” she asked, pointing to her nose.
    Ellie smiled, giving her a fond look. “Seven or eight freckles is hardly enough to be overly concerned about.”
    “Well, what about this neck?”
    “What about it?”
    “I don’t have one!” Katherine wailed.
    “Oh, Katherine. You have a neck. You most certainly do.”
    “No, I don’t. See?” Katherine pulled the collar of her dress apart to emphasize her point. She even went so far as to stretch her neck. “You see? I was right. There is no neck here. My head is sitting on top of my shoulders. I’ll probably go through life being called ‘No neck Simon.’”
    Ellie clucked her tongue. “Shame on you, Katherine,” she said, wagging her finger at her. “You shouldn’t poke fun at yourself.”
    “I suppose you’re right,” Katherine said morosely. “I should let everyone else call me ‘No neck Simon.’”
    “Has anyone called you that?”
    “No, but they will.”
    Ellie laughed. “I hope the Good Lord isn’t listening to you right now. What would He think?”
    “He’d probably agree with everything I’m saying.”
    “Oh, Katherine,” protested her mother. “Honestly, I think you’re just looking for something wrong. You have a neck. You have a lovely face. Your figure will come. Right now you’re between stages, no longer a little girl, but not quite a woman.”
    Katherine groaned. “What if I’m stuck there? What if I never become a woman?”
    Ellie’s laugh was a little heartier this time, and her words a bit more understanding. “You’ll become a woman whether you want to or not. That’s one thing you can’t stop.”
    “Who’s trying to stop it? I’d give my three favorite peacock feathers to hurry it along.”
    Ellie watched Katherine step away from the mirror, over her hastily discarded nightgown, past her unmade bed, stepping over the dress she wore yesterday, to stop and pick up one of her precious peacock feathers that had fallen from behind the cross-hatched picture over her bed. She leaned over the bed and placed the feather in its proper place alongside the other two.
    Ellie sighed and gave Katherine a fond look. Her daughters were only a year apart in age, but a decade apart in womanly things. Ellie watched Katherine slump on her bed, her hand coming to rest on the bedside table where an opened book lay.
    She touched that book as if the words could be absorbed through her fingertips. And perhaps they were. Perhaps they went straight into her blood and flowed directly to her heart, for everything about Katherine seemed to come from the heart. And that is where the greatest difference between Katherine and Karin lay. Katherine had a depth and sensitivity that Ellie feared Karin would never possess. While Katherine knew the plot of every classic by heart and could quote poetry or scripture until the cows came home, she had not the faintest inkling about fashion, and showed no interest in learning. She could grow anything, knew every flower by a dozen names, as well as its history, and she had a way with animals and people, not to mention the fact that she could cook circles around half the women in the county. But when it came to knowledge about women’s clothing, Ellie had to agree with Katherine. It did indeed look rather hopeless. “Grow where you are planted, Katherine,” was the only advice she had to give.
    “Wonderful,” Katherine said, throwing up her hands in disgust. “I could be one of those beans that sprout on the outhouse floor and all my mother says is, ‘Grow where you are planted.’” She went on to add, “Why couldn’t I sprout in a rich man’s garden like Karin?”
    “Karin isn’t any richer than you are.”
    “Oh, but she is. She is. She always looks like she is rolling in money.”
    Once again, Ellie was inclined to agree with Katherine.
    Money for the Simons was scarce