Mind Games

She had a training bra, just in case, but felt stupid wearing it when nothing went in it. Plus, stupid name, she thought as she did her hair in a single braid like her grandmother’s.

If she could’ve trained her breasts to come out, she would have!

She took a moment to study her face in the mirror and wondered how she’d look if she had a white streak in her hair like Grammie. It always struck her as kind of magical.

Then again, that white streak had appeared overnight, according to family lore, when the grandpa Thea never knew except in pictures and stories died in the mine.

When she got married, Thea didn’t want her husband to die. She wanted the happy ever after, the way she made sure her dreams worked out.

Because she thought of Zachariah Lannigan, she walked to Lucy’s room. A made-up bed because her grandmother always woke up first, the scent of the hills from the flowers on the dresser, and the breeze fluttering the sheers at the open windows. And the photo in a brown leather frame of a fair-haired man with eyes the color her mom called seafoam green when decorating.

He was handsome, not like her current dream boy, Nick Jonas, but handsome even though he was a lot older.

Lucy said she’d taken the picture herself on his thirtieth birthday.

He’d died, crushed in a cave-in, less than a year later.

“I’m sorry that happened.” As she spoke to the picture, she touched the frame. “Grammie—Lucy—still misses you. I can feel it. My mom—that’s Cora—thinks of you on Father’s Day, and at Christmas, on your birthday, the day you died, and sometimes between. She thinks Rem, my brother, has your chin and your mouth, and I guess he sort of does. Anyway…”

She couldn’t think of anything else to say to a photo in a frame, so she went out and downstairs.

Lucy sat on the back porch drinking her coffee.

“Morning, honeypot. Did you dream good?”

“Uh-huh. Mog’s the evil sorceress. She has a pointy black beard and eyes that are almost black, too.”

“Gracious, she even looks evil!”

“If she finds the Jewel of the Ancients before Gwyn and Twink and Zed do, she’ll make slaves out of everybody and rule the forest and the hills and the valleys and river lands beyond it.”

“They better get to work! I do admire your imagination, my own Thea, and like to wonder what you’ll do with it. Rem’s still sleeping.”

She nodded, bent down to rub the heads on the two hounds sprawled at Gram’s feet. “Cocoa’s in the bed with him.”

“They’re tuckered, so we’ll leave them be. We had a late night, didn’t we? Why don’t you take Aster into the barn for milking. We’ll get the ladies fed, see what they’ve got for us. Molly’s milk’s going into soaps we’ll make today.”

“Rem’s supposed to help with the chores.”

With a quiet look, Lucy rose. “If you were tuckered, I’d ask him to do the same for you.”

“Okay.”

“And we’ll have him wash the poop off the eggs.”

“He actually likes doing that.”

“A task enjoyed doesn’t make it less done. When the milking’s done, we’ll put Aster in the next field for the day. After supper, we’ll put her in the barn for the night. We’ve got a storm coming. A boomer.”

Thea looked up, saw the blue sky with a few puffy white clouds. But she didn’t question Lucy’s weather forecasting.

“Okay.”

“A storm’s coming,” she said again, and rubbed at her heart.

Thea led Aster to the barn. She actually liked doing that, but like Lucy said, it didn’t make the chore less done.

She liked squirting Aster’s milk in the pail, too. Some of her friends back home thought that was gross, but she liked it.