Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
I stared at the swinging door at the bottom, but there was no movement.
“Agnes?” I tried again.
Still nothing.
I fought the urge to crawl on my belly and stick my head through the opening, but I wasn’t going to invade her privacy like that, not when we were still working on our relationship. We were getting somewhere slowly, very slowly, but there was only so much push she could take.
But just to be on the safe side….
“Did I do something?” I asked out loud. “It’s okay to tell me if I did.” I didn’t think so, but….
“No,” the grumpy, small voice answered, surprising the crap out of me.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she replied, still touchy.
All right. “Do you need help with something?”
Another moment of silence stretched so long, I was convinced she was done answering again, but just as I was about to try another tactic to get her to talk, she spoke up. “You don’t know how to do it.”
“How to do what?” I asked, already offended by her lack of faith in me.
“Braid my hair.”
“I know how to braid hair.”
There was another long pause. “Then why does your hair always look messy?”
Not scoffing right then might have been the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. That was mean. “Because I don’t care what my hair looks like.” I stopped myself from rolling my eyes at the door. She was a child. She was a child. “Would you like me to braid your hair?”
“No.”
She hadn’t thought about that answer at all. That time, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “Want me to try another hairstyle then? Space buns? Pigtails?” How did little girls like their hair? My mom had let me run around like a feral animal. I didn’t think I’d used hair products other than shampoo until I’d turned fifteen.
“Can you make them straight? Sera always makes one too high.”
I barely held back a snicker. “I can try my best,” I promised.
There was another very long moment of silence before she grudgingly said, “Okay.”
I reminded myself again that she was young. Very young. “Can I come in?”
More silence then, “Okay.”
This kid was making me work for it. Of all the nursery kids, she was still the only tough cookie. The only one who kept everyone she didn’t love at a distance, and there weren’t a whole lot of people who made the cut. She tolerated Pascal and Shiloh, and a couple other kids—which I figured was the equivalent of friendship. But Duncan she was always sweet to, always so patient and kind with.
Like she was with Henri.
And that just made me even more determined to win her over, even if it took years.
All good things required work after all, I thought, which had my mind straying to my mom. She had told me more than once that people were a lot like plants, and that life in general was very similar to gardening. Some people were thorny, and other people had very weak stems.
As she would remind me in this situation, some plants took a whole lot of water to grow, some plants were cacti that needed just a little to thrive and flourish.
And Agnes, despite her sharp teeth, was more like a bonsai, I guess. Her conditions had to be perfect for her to flourish. But I had a feeling that when she did, she’d be the most beautiful girl in the entire world.
Turning the knob, I opened the door. The room was a little bigger than ours, the walls a pale purple. She had a practical full-sized bed with a plain wooden headboard painted white. Across from it was a big matching dresser with a few knickknacks that ranged from a toy race car to a jewelry box with a ballerina in the middle of it. There was also a picture frame with her and Henri at what looked like a carnival.
On her neatly made bed were so many stuffed animals I wasn’t sure I had enough time to count them.
It was those that touched me the most. She might be a tattletale ready to bite someone’s fingers off, but she was a little kid. A girl who was cared for by a community of people.
But why hadn’t any of the families on the ranch adopted her? It didn’t make sense, and that just made me sadder. But there was no way I could let my eyes water in her presence, so I was going to have to do this on her terms, at least until she tolerated me better.
She stood beside her bed in bell-bottom jeans and a pink sweater, her cute face twisted into a very, very watchful one, almost like she was expecting me to give her a reason to kick me out. But it was gonna suck to be her because I wasn’t letting that happen. We could play by her rules. I was going to water this little bud.