Lydia shrugged. “It’s okay.”
Margaret dusted her hands together, then wiped them on her skirt. “I think we did a good job.” She smiled at Lydia. “Thank you for helping.”
Lydia didn’t respond. She was watching her brother and Hank. Margaret turned and looked across the clearing. Hank was lifting Theodore in the air so he could lay palm fronds on top of their square hut. It looked very sturdy. The walls and roof were stuffed loosely with palm fronds between the bamboo frame.
She looked back at the tepee. She thought their thatch looked stronger. She laughed. “I’ll have to thank Mr. Wyatt for his suggestion.” She looked at Lydia, who just shrugged.
Margaret thought of Hank’s nasty words as she studied the tepee. “The perfect rebuttal,” she mumbled to herself.
Lydia looked at her. “What’s a rebuttal?”
Margaret hadn’t thought she was paying attention. “In court, when someone raises an assumption of a fact, the opposing argument is a rebuttal. Proof they are wrong. It is like winning an argument. A way of showing that something is true or false.”
Lydia seemed to think about that, then after a moment she looked at Margaret strangely. “Are you really an attorney?”
“Yes, I am.”
“You go to a court and everything?”
She nodded.
Lydia bent down and picked up Annabelle, hugging her sister tightly. “My mother stayed home with us.”
“Many women stay home with their families. But more and more women are working and quite a few are professionals. Doctors, lawyers, journalists. We have a woman editor on the paper at home.”
Lydia bounced Annabelle. “Mrs. Robbins, who lived next door, was a teacher. I asked Mama once if she ever wanted to be a teacher or something like that. She said we were enough for her.” There was a note of challenge in her tone.
Margaret was used to arguing with hard-headed men. Hank wasn’t the first one she’d encountered and he probably wouldn’t be the last. Most men thought the world was theirs alone to manage. She had learned a long time ago that her father and uncles were the exception rather than the rule.
Under their tutelage, she had grown up believing that she could be anything she wanted to be as long as she earned it. Her father respected her mind and helped her sharpen it, and not once had he said she couldn’t be or do something because she was female. If she worked hard, she could become anything. She had lived thirty-two years exactly that way.
She could hold her own with other women, too. Make them understand her desire that the world be fair and equal and just for everyone, male or female. Only her colleagues, father, and uncles understood her absolute love of the law. It was her life.
But she wasn’t certain she should or could defend her choice to this quiet young girl. She certainly wasn’t going to contradict the girl’s dead mother.
She needed to think long and hard about how to deal with these children. She knew she had to understand them, to be able to think like them and see the world through their eyes or she’d never be able to help.
Yet with them, she felt completely unnerved, like she was walking into court unprepared. She felt responsible for them. They had no one else but her.
She watched Lydia play with the baby. Even now she didn’t smile. Margaret realized that she’d never seen Lydia smile.
Lydia picked that moment to look up.
She has old eyes, Margaret thought. Too old for a young girl. Margaret nodded at Annabelle. “I’ll take her for you.”
“No.” Lydia stepped back. “She’smysister.”
Margaret was caught completely off guard by the sharpness in the girl’s voice. Lydia turned away, pointedly ignoring Margaret. She began to sing a silly song to Annabelle.
A minute or so later, Lydia took Annabelle’s hand and walked slowly away. Margaret saw that Lydia was putting distance between them for a purpose. And although it was only a few feet, at that moment it seemed like miles.
* * *
“Miss Smith!Miss Smith!Something’s wrong with Hank!”
Margaret grabbed Theodore as he barreled into the tepee. “Calm down, Theodore. Please.”
“But Hank’s sick. Hurry! Please. He might die! Please.” He looked up at her. “Everyone dies.”
