The Scavenger's Daughters (Tales of the Scavenger's Daughters, Book One) Read Online Free PDF

If her parents had their way, she’d already be dead,” Ivy blurted out, and received a chastising look from her Nai Nai.
    Benfu saw Peony visibly wince, then lower her head. “My mother didn’t mean for me to die. She wanted me to get help. She told me so,” she said, picking at the threads in the colorful rug she sat on.
    Benfu shook his head. The girls knew he had a strict rule about criticizing parents for leaving their children. He always told them no one knew the entire story or what was truly in the parents’ hearts. He even believed that sometimes it wasn’t the mothers who did or even agreed to the abandoning of their children. He knew that from experience—a hard lesson he’d learned years before.
    “Zheng Ivy, we mustn’t make rash judgments. Perhaps her mother was sick herself and someone else took her baby from her. We just do not know the truths of the story. All we know is that it is fate that she is a part of our family now,” Benfu gently chastised her while pushing away a forbidden memory that threatened to invade his thoughts.
    Ivy hung her head, her cheeks flaming. Benfu patted her on the back. Ivy and Lily were their only set of twins—identical at that!—and had been with them for nine years. At first he’d got their names constantly confused but he’d finally stopped calling them the wrong names. Now they were fourteen and Ivy’s emotions seemed to be all over the place as she struggled with feelings about her birth parents. She was a loyal one—he’d give her that. She’d always been the eyes for her blind sister and totally devoted to caring for her. Lily had so far been a gentle-mannered girl but lately Benfu could sense some discontent behind her unwavering stare.
    He knew she needed to be enrolled in a school for the blind but so far his requests had gone unheeded by the council of affairs. The whole family continued to let her be as independent as possible but the truth was that she needed more assistance to learn the ways of the blind than they could give.
    Ivy didn’t lift her face to meet his gaze; she didn’t like to be scolded. And in return he didn’t like to see his girls unhappy and rarely worked up the energy to discipline them. He didn’t see life through rose-colored glasses, though. He’d admitted before that some of the girls who’d passed through their doors had taken months and even years to soften. Many of them had been physically or emotionally abused—sometimes even both—but he and Calli always remembered that all children had some good in them. With the most difficult cases, they’d focused on giving them a stable home, and Lao Tzu was right when he once said, “Kindness in giving creates love.”
    Benfu sighed as he thought about how dearly he loved all twenty-four flowers that had bloomed in the fields of his life.

A s the sun set and the nighttime chill invaded their house, the rest of the family arrived and they all gathered around the room, ready to sit down for supper. The concrete floors had been swept clean and mopped, the colorful braided rugs beaten and returned to their places. The fire had been allowed to die down, the usual routine to keep the girls from breathing in too much coal smoke as they slept. Benfu also kept their supply of coal rationed, in case the weather turned bad and he couldn’t buy more. Coal used to be inexpensive but nothing was cheap these days. It was inevitable that the cost of living in Beitang would soon catch up to the bigger cities. Every yuan needed to be carefully accounted for.
    The modest home could only accommodate a small table that sat three, so all but Jasmine scattered to other perches. Some balanced on overturned crates and some on short stools. Benfu always told the others that he liked to have Jasmine at the table beside him so he could watch and make sure their tiny sister ate her dinner. The other girls didn’t mind—they knew his affection for Jasmine and, bundled up in coats and scarves,