Her father looked thoughtful.
“And what about the other two sitting rooms stacked full with all your reference books?”
"Regardless,” her father said in his most dignified manner. “I am marrying Mrs. Barry, and she and the girls are shifting in to live with us.”
“How could you do such a thing at your age, Daddy?” Cindy stormed.
“I’m only forty-five years old,” her father argued, looking worried.
“How could you?” Cindy burst out again as she flung out of the room, slamming the door hard on her way out.
She ran into the back yard and sat by the swimming pool. The water was a dark carpet of leaves blending with the gloom. Six turtles and a family of frogs lived in the pool.
Hooper, the fat Boxer dog, waddled over to sit beside Cindy. He dropped his head into her lap and snuffled.
“How could he?” Cindy muttered as she stroked his head. “Dreadful Mrs. Barry, of all people, and her stupid daughters! Why does he want to get married?”
Several ripples broke the surface of the water. The turtles were hungry. Cindy stood up and went into the laundry. She opened the spare refrigerator, took out some minced meat and a carton of milk.
She threw the meat into the pool for the turtles and poured milk into saucers for the possums. Hooper moved back as the opossums arrived. They were irritable and unfriendly. Cindy was the only person they accepted.
People didn’t take much notice of Cindy, but all the birds, frogs, reptiles, and other animals liked her. She was small for her age and wore faded jeans, and her shirts and jumpers were usually stained with whatever she had been feeding her various animals. Her mirror always reflected a thin brown cheerful face, half hidden by lank, straight, mousey-blonde hair, and blue eyes.
Cindy brooded about her father’s news and Mrs. Barry as she fed the rabbits, cleaned the guinea pigs’ cages, and measured out pellets for Amanda the goat.
Mrs. Guinevieve Barry was the widow of the bank manager, who had disappeared on one of his fishing trips. She lived with her two daughters in a unit near the university.
She smiled a lot, but her dark eyes, fringed by darkened lashes, were hard and watchful. Her wardrobe included mink stoles, kangaroo-skin coats, and soft fur muffs. This was enough to make Cindy dislike her without her two daughters.
Cindy was on her last chore for the evening, brushing Horace, the Siamese cat. Her brush strokes slowed as the thought hit her that Mrs. Barry had trapped her father into marriage. Her father was so thick he probably hadn’t realized the marriage wasn’t his idea in the first place.
“Yeeah,” Horace growled when Cindy’s hand stopped moving.
“Don’t snitch,” Cindy said and resumed her brushing.
She suddenly felt more positive. The problem of the threatened takeover of their home and lives by Mrs. Barry and her dreadful daughters had a simple solution. She would stop them from getting married.
“After all,” she told the purring Horace. “It’s the right thing to do to protect Dad from himself and his silly ideas.”
Astraea Press
Pure. Fiction.
www.astraeapress.com
Three's a Crowd Page 10
