She gasped loudly and straightened, then realized Annabelle was asleep nearby. She cast a quick glance at the baby. She hadn’t moved. Clutching her prize find, she turned back. “Look,” she said in a loud whisper and held up a small bar of French-milled soap.
Lydia and Theodore blankly stared at her. The same way they had when she’d found the toothbrushes and tin of toothpowder.
She held it out. “See? It’s soap. Real soap! We can bathe and wash our hair.” She closed her eyes briefly. “A bath. A real bath.” She sighed and gripped the soap a little tighter.
“Yuk!”
She crossed her arms and gave Theodore a direct look. “A bath wouldn’t hurt you, young man.”
He shivered and wrinkled his freckled nose.
She felt Hank’s look and glanced up at him. He was eyeing her soap.
“I believe I’ll keep this,” she said pointedly and tucked it into the deep pocket of her skirt, the same safe place she’d put a toothbrush and tooth powder.
She and Hank had spent the past half an hour arguing over what was important to their survival. Margaret had gathered clothing, toothbrushes, a hairbrush, and something that caught Lydia’s attention—satin hair ribbons.
Hank had a pocketknife, tools, and a flint. He just finished picking another of the locked trunks and opened the lid. She watched him pull out a man’s cap with a long brim, look at it, then put it on. It fit perfectly.
Must be a large size, she thought.
Then he bent over and began to randomly toss things aside as if they were completely worthless.
The goat came trotting by and dropped something at Hank’s feet. He scowled down, bent over, picked it up, gave it a disgusted look, before he pitched it toward the water. The goat brayed and trotted after it.
“What was that?”
“Some old worthless bottle.” He bent over the trunk and threw out something else.
“You keep throwing things away.”
“Worthless,” he muttered and stuffed something back inside the trunk.
Margaret propped her fists on her hips. “What was that?”
“This?” Hank held up a corset by its tape strap. She raised her chin. “I’ll take that, please.”
He stared at her, his gaze on the area below her chin. After a few seconds, he pointedly looked at the corset, held it up, and turned it this way, then that, eyeing it. He looked back at her figure and frowned. “Think it’ll fit?”
She snatched it away. “You are so very witty.”
It took a minute or two for him to stop chuckling. “Now here’s something useful.” He held up a deck of playing cards and shuffled them with the ease of someone born with a deck of cards in his hand. He did a fancy shuffle by arching his hands.
Theodore looked up at him with awe. “Can you teach me to do that?”
“No!” Margaret said.
“Sure,” Hank said at the same time.
She gave him a pointed look. “He’s a child.”
“The best time to learn.” He handed the cards to Theodore, who sat in the sand and tried to shuffle them. Cards flew everywhere. A chagrined Theodore picked them up and handed them back to Hank.
“Like this.” Hank bent down and fit his hands over Theodore’s. He cupped the cards and let them shuffle into a neat stack into the boy’s fingers.
She didn’t say a word. She couldn’t, not when she saw Theodore’s delighted face turn up to grin at Hank. She cast a glance at Lydia, who was also watching them. “Perhaps you can show Lydia, too.”
“I don’t want to shuffle any silly old cards,” Lydia said and walked toward the goat.
