Sugar Plums for Dry Creek

“So the only way Amanda can wear this costume is if she’s in your performance?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t say it was my performance.” Lizette felt her patience starting to grow thin. “All of the students will see it as their performance. We work together.”

“About the students—” The older man began again and cleared his throat for what must have been the fourth time.

“I’ll sign Amanda up,” the younger man said decisively. “If she signs up first, she should get her pick of the parts, shouldn’t she?”

“Well, I don’t see why she can’t be the Sugar Plum Fairy,” Lizette agreed. After all, Lizette herself would be choreographing the part for the children’s ballet, and could tailor it to Amanda’s skills. She’d just gotten her first student. “She’ll have to practice, of course. And we’ll have to have a few more students to do even a shortened version of the Nutcracker.”

The younger man squeezed the boy on his shoulder.

“I’ll sign up, too,” the boy offered reluctantly.

“There—I have two students!” Lizette announced triumphantly. “And I only just hung up my sign.”

The older man cleared his throat again, but this time he had nothing to say. All of the older men were looking a little stunned. Maybe they were as taken aback as she was by the fierce scowl the younger man was giving them.

“You might want to see a doctor about the cold you’re getting,” Lizette finally said to the man who had been trying to talk. “Usually when you have to clear your throat so often, it means a cold is coming on.”

The older man nodded silently.

“And you might ask him about taking up ballet while you’re there,” Lizette said. “Just to see if the exercise would be all right for you. Now that I have two students, I can begin classes, and you’d be more than welcome.”

Lizette decided the older man definitely had a cold coming on. He had just gone pale. He even looked a little dizzy.

“You’ll want to wait until you’re feeling better before you start though,” Lizette said to him. That seemed to make him feel better. At least his color returned.

“I’ll think about it,” he mumbled.

Lizette nodded. She knew she couldn’t manage for long on the income she’d get from two students, but just look how much people wanted to talk about her school. With all of that talk, she’d get more students before long.

Lizette smiled up at the younger man. He might scowl a lot, but she was grateful to him for her first two students. “Your wife must be happy you take such good care of the children.”

The young man looked down at her. “I don’t have a wife.”

Lizette faltered. “Oh, I just thought that because their father showed me their picture that—”

“You know the kids’ father, Neal Strong?”

If Lizette thought the men had been quiet before, they were even more silent now.

“No, I don’t know him. Some man just showed me their picture in Forsyth when he asked me to give him a ride out this way. He said they were his kids and he was trying to find them. He probably didn’t know the address or something.”

Judd felt Amanda move closer to his leg, and suddenly he had as great a need to be close to her as she had to be close to him, so he reached down and lifted her up even though he had his heavy farm coat on and it probably had grease on it from when he’d last worked on the tractor.

“Don’t worry,” Judd whispered into Amanda’s hair when she snuggled into his shoulder.

Judd reminded himself that the papers Barbara had shown him when she left the children with him included a court order forbidding the children’s father from being within one hundred yards of them.

Judd knew the court clerk well enough now that he could ask for a copy of the court order if he needed one. Of course, that would mean the clerk would guess that the children were with him. No, there had to be another way. Besides, he didn’t actually need a copy of the order for the court to enforce it.

“You’re sure it was him?” Judd turned to ask the woman. He didn’t know how the children’s father would even know where they were unless Barbara had told him.

“He had a picture and he said he was their father,” Lizette said. “He had a snake on his arm.”

Amanda went still in Judd’s arm. The kids had told him about the snake.

Judd nodded. He should have figured something like this would happen. He wondered if his cousin had gotten back with her husband, after all. Generally, Judd was a supporter of married folks staying together. But some of the things Bobby had let slip while he was at Judd’s place would make anyone advise Barbara to forget her husband.

The one thing Judd knew was that he didn’t want that man to come within shouting distance of the children.

“You have a lock on this place, I suppose,” Judd said as he looked inside the building the woman was going to use for her school. If he brought the kids to the lessons and then came back to pick them up, they should be safe.

“I could put a lock on,” one of the older men spoke up. “It’s no trouble. They have some heavy-duty ones over at the hardware store.”

“And it wouldn’t hurt Charley here to come over and sit while the kids have their lessons,” another older man offered. “He always complains that the chairs at the hardware store are too hard anyway. Now that he’s got his fancy phone, he can call the sheriff any time, night or day.”

Judd nodded. It felt good to have neighbors, even if he hadn’t been very neighborly himself. He wasn’t sure what he could do to repay them, but he intended to try. “I’ll be watching, too.”

“Is something wrong?” Lizette looked at the men’s faces.

“Their father isn’t fit to be near these kids—even the court says so,” Judd said quietly. He could see the alarm grow on Lizette’s face. “Not that you have to worry about it. We’ll take care of the guarding. You won’t even know we’re here. We can even sit outside.”

“In the snow?” Charley protested.

“Of course you can’t sit outside in the cold,” Lizette said. “I’ll put some chairs along the side of the practice area. And I’ll be careful about who else I accept as students. I’ll check references on any grown man who wants to join the class.”

Charley snorted. “Ain’t no grown man hereabouts that’ll sign up. Not if he wants to keep his boots—”

One of the other older men interrupted him. “I thought you was gonna sign up yourself, Charley. You can’t just sit and watch everyone else practice. That wouldn’t be right.”

“Why, I can’t do no ballet,” Charley said, and then looked around at the faces of his friends. “I got me that stiff knee, remember—from the time I was loading that heifer and it pinned me against the corral?”

“The exercises might even help you then,” Lizette said. “We do a lot of stretching and bending to warm up.”

If Judd hadn’t still been thinking about the children’s father, he would have laughed at Charley’s trapped expression. As it was, he was just glad Charley would be inside with the children. For himself, Judd thought, he’d set up a chair outside the door, so he could keep his eyes on who was driving into Dry Creek.

Judd didn’t trust the children’s father and was determined to keep the man as far away from Dry Creek as possible. First thing in the morning Judd decided he’d tell Sheriff Wall all about the court order.

Judd had only met the sheriff once, but he trusted the man. Sheriff Wall might not be one of those big-city sheriffs who solved complicated crimes, but he had the persistence and instincts of a guard dog. And the man knew every road coming near Dry Creek, even the ones that were just pasture trails. The kids would be safer with Sheriff Wall on the job.

“I can pay in advance for the lessons,” Judd announced. He didn’t like the sympathetic look the ballet woman was giving the kids now that Charley had accepted his fate. Judd didn’t want the woman to think they couldn’t pay their way, especially not when she’d have to give special attention to the security of her classroom.

“There’s no need to pay now,” the woman protested.

But Judd already had two twenty-dollar bills in his hand and he held them out to her. “Let me know if it costs more.”

“That should cover their first couple of lessons,” Lizette said as she took the money and turned to a desk in a corner of the large room. “Just let me get a receipt for you.”