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time.
    Osbee’s brown eyes, as deep and endless as her root, revealed nothing, answered nothing. She frowned then.
    “Why is that dirty dog in here?” Osbee asked, scowling at Beau. He sat promptly, hoping manners would get him through the kitchen door.
    “Regard came in,” Ginger replied, folding Jesse’s coat over her arm. She nodded to the dog, who quickly rose and shuffled by Osbee.
    “And?”
    “Seems unfair to leave the dog out when the cat is in.” Ginger cocked her head and followed Beau through the door. She tossed Jesse’s coat on the back of an empty kitchen chair.
    “Mom, Oliver stole my pencil,” Henry said.
    “Did not.”
    “That’s mine,” Henry said.
    “Doesn’t have your name on it,” Oliver replied. He said it exactly in the same voice Henry used when taunting Bea. Little boys learn so much from big boys, but it always seemed to Ginger they learned the worst things first.
    “Give Henry back his pencil and go get your own,” Ginger said to Oliver.
    “It’s mine, Mama!”
    “Oliver, your pencils always have teeth marks and you bite the eraser off. That pencil clearly has its eraser. Now give it back to your brother and go get your own.”
    Oliver slammed the pencil down so hard it bounced off the table and hit Bea on the chin.
    “Hey,” Bea said quietly. “Watch it.”
    The little girl rubbed her chin and went back to her homework. She didn’t even look up. Ginger pursed her lips and opened the refrigerator.
    “I wish I could run away,” Henry said.
    “Wouldn’t you be lonely?” Ginger asked as she surveyed the milk cartons for the open one.
    “No. I’d be happy at not having to listen to Oliver whining.”
    “One time your daddy ran away,” Osbee said.
    “He did?” Ginger asked. She didn’t know that.
    “Yep. Crossed the river in his boat and wasn’t coming back.”
    “Why?” Henry asked.
    “Because summer was ending and he didn’t want to go back home to Richmond,” Osbee replied. “He got lost and he was missing for an entire night. It rained and thundered and worried me and his grandpa something awful. Then he walks back in the door the next morning and apologizes. Tells us he’ll go home so he could come back. He realized if he’d have stayed away, his parents would never allow him to spend summers here again.”
    Ginger poured milk into her coffee and gazed over at Bea. The little girl didn’t even appear to be marking the conversation.
    “How did he find his way back?” Henry asked.
    “A man found him and they camped together. Then he helped your dad come home. He was very lucky to run across someone on that kind of night in the state park over there.”
    “You want some milk while I have it out, Bea?” Ginger asked, prompting some response from her daughter.
    “No, thanks, Mama,” she replied without as much as a glance in her direction.
    “You, Henry?”
    “No, thanks. I’ll wait for dinner.”
    “Such nice manners,” Osbee said, stirring the pot on the stove. “Sometimes, Henry, you have to think of others, not just what you want. What if you left? Bea would have to deal with Oliver all by herself.”
    Henry smiled over at his mother. Bea made no response at all.
    “What’s for dinner?” Oliver asked, returning from the other room and settling back into his chair. He had found one of hispencils. It was so ravaged, the lead was sticking out on one side where he had chewed all the wood away.
    “Spaghetti.”
    “Again?” Oliver whined. “We always have spaghetti.”
    “Shut up, Oliver,” Henry said.
    “Don’t say, ‘Shut up.’ Say, ‘Be quiet,’” Ginger corrected as she put the milk away.
    “You shut up,” Oliver said. “I want some milk.”
    “You can wait for dinner.”
    “Why’d you ask
them
?” Everything was a whine.
    “I can’t hear you, Oliver,” Ginger replied, stirring her coffee.
    “Why’d you ask them?” he said, his whiny voice growing louder.
    “She can’t hear you ’cause you’re whining,”