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Hester crossed her ar you back so soon"

"Well I thank you for keeping an eye on them, Hester"

"I wasn’t in there but aher head back toward the kitchen

"Okay, you weren’t It’s fine" Dellarobia knew any tone she took with Hester would be the wrong one These conversations wore her out before they began

"I was fixing to heat up soreens for lunch"

For whose lunch, Dellarobia wondered It sounded like one that would require more than baby teeth, not toThey both watched Cordelia stand up precariously, red-faced and howling She et, and probably had been all e inside her yellow footie paja round pumpkin No wonder the child couldn’t balance Dellarobia took a drag on her ale Cordie here or just get out of Dodge

"You shouldn’t smoke when you’re around theravel voice A woman who’d probably blown smoke in Cub’s little red face the oodness, I would never do that I only s a suntan on the Riviera"

Hester looked stunned,the boots and the chenille scarf "Look at you What’s got into you?"

Dellarobia wondered if she looked as she felt, like a wo a fire

"Preston, honey, say bye-bye to your Mahtly between her teeth so she could lift Cordelia to her hip, take Preston’s hand, and steer her fa better than this

2

Fa day the weather turned cool and fine On the strength of that and nothing ray clouds scurried away to parts unknown like a fleet of barn cats The chore of turning ninety ewes and their uncountable half-grown laood work instead of the misery expected by all As far as Dellarobia could re had been so pleasant After all the months of dampness, the air inside the barn now seemed unnaturally dry Strayfroh s, and the day smelled mostly of lanolin rather than urine and h to be skirted while still warm off the sheep Dellarobia stood across fro table where they worked with four other wo over the white fleece spread out between them The six of them surrounded the table evenly like nu inward rather than out

There was no denying the clear sky was fortuitous If the sheep had stood in rain andto be shorn, some of the ould have been too fouled for sale A lot of incoood luck was too simple for Hester, who now declared that God had taken a hand in the weather Dellarobia felt provoked by the self-congratulation "So you’re thinking God ht, just for us?" she asked

"Know that the Lord God is hty," replied Hester, who likely could live her whole life as a string of Bible quotes She looked daunting in a red-checked blouse with pearl snaps and white piping on the yoke Everyone else wore old work clothes, but Hester nearly always dressed as if she ht later be headed out for a square dance The festivities never materialized

"Okay, then, he ave her a rush, like a second beer on an e God as a coconspirator in farhbors’ tomato crop had melted to liquid stench on the vine under the sual caul that was sether

Valia Estep and her big-haired daughter Crystal both looked at their hands, and so did the two Norwood ladies They combed the white fleece for burrs and bits of straw as if the world turned on rooting out these i with ham biscuits and coffee at six aain Hester’s sanction in the five years since they’d moved here But the Norwoods’ far back several generations, and they were also sheep far Valia and Crystal were motivated only by friendship, it seeue unmentioned debt They all attended Hester’s church, which Dellarobia viewed as a co ultimately on the shoulders of the Lord, but rife with ers

"I didn’t say word one about those Cook people," Hester said, not letting it go "Valia, did you hear me say word one about the Cooks?"

"I don’t think you did," replied mousy Valia Dellarobia knew her reement from these women Hester’s confidence in her own rectitude was frankly unwo about herself, not even her wardrobe Hester owned cowboy boots in reen lizard But at the ic that irked Dellarobia: if Hester and Bear had bad luck, like the winter of terrible chest colds they’d suffered last year, they blaed thenosed with cancer the same winter, Hester implied God was a party to the outcome Dellarobia had let this kind of talk slide for years, showing no more backbone really than Valia or any other toad in Hester’s choir

Until now "Well, it just see," she said "That God stopped the rain for us, but not the Cooks So he ot into you, ood You’d do well to consult youryour elders" Hester spoke down her nose She lorded her height over others in a way that her tall son did not, even though Cub had a good fifteen inches on Dellarobia Only Hester could cut her daughter-in-lan to her actual size: a person who bought her sweatshirts in the boys’ department, to save money