The Tender Years Read Online Free PDF Page A

its accustomed place. She blamed Rodney. He was always taking things off to his own room, as though he were the only one in the house who ever studied.
    She could hear voices in the backyard. Her father and mother were returning with Danny after having released the weasel. Francine had gone with them. Virginia was glad that the child was not following her around, looking soulful and anxious.
    “I hope he doesn’t go near Mr. Powell’s chicken coop again, or he might get another foot in the trap,” Francine was worrying.
    “He should have learned his lesson,” responded Danny.
    “But if he gets hungry and he knows there is food there …”
    Francine let the words hang on the evening air. Virginia flipped back her long hair with one defiant motion. Surely the weasel wasn’t so stupid that he would walk right back into trouble again. Surely he now knew the traps were there.
    But then, as Francine said, if he was hungry, perhaps he would be willing to take the risk. Virginia shrugged. If he was that dumb, maybe he deserved to have his leg dangling, damaged by the cruel teeth of the trap.
    “I hope he can find his family again.” Francine picked up a new worry. “Do you think they might have moved away while he was getting better?”
    “He’ll find them,” their father assured her.
    Virginia glanced out the window to see her father place an arm about Francine’s shoulder. The other sleeve was pinned up, revealing the fact that the limb had been lost. Virginia hated to see her father without his prosthesis. It was such a grim reminder that her father was not perfect. At least not physically perfect. Then it was too easy to entertain the next thought. To realize that he actually might not be perfect in other ways as well.
    There had been a time in her life when she had felt that her father was perfect in every way. Anyone who had a father with two arms simply had one who was different from her own. Not better. Likely not even as good. Just different.
    But she had learned a great deal in the last year. Many of life’s discoveries had come through her new friend Jenny. Jenny had moved to their small town from a big city, and Jenny knew all about life. Jenny’s father was a newspaper man. Had served on the staff of a large city paper until he had decided that he wished to run a paper of his own. Jenny’s father knew all about things. He had “seen it all,” Jenny said. And along with that seeing had come a good deal of mistrust. Life, according to Jenny, could be pretty rough and rugged. And people—people were not really what they seemed to be. Everyone—no exceptions—presented the face they wished the public to see. Underneath they were only looking out for their own good.
    Jenny should know. Her own mother had deserted them, her and her father, to run off to some island with a news reporter. But then, Jenny had shrugged, her father didn’t care much for her mother, anyway. What difference did it make that her mother was no longer with them? She supposed her father might be glad she was gone. She was always complaining, he’d said. Never happy with anything. He actually had treated her rather badly in private.
    When Jenny had shared all of her personal secrets with Virginia, the young girl had at first felt an unknown fear tear at her heart. Her mother would not do that. Would she? But then her father did not treat her mother badly. Did he? But what did she really know? What went on behind closed doors? Did her folks, too, put on a different face for everyone else?
    Virginia had not slept well for the first several nights after Jenny’s frankness. But with Jenny’s assurance that they were now big enough to take care of themselves, she had tried to lay aside her fear. Jenny had even extracted Virginia’s solemn promise that they would always take care of each other. That’s the way it would be. The two of them. Together. Against the world, if need be.
    It really hadn’t put Virginia’s mind at ease as