Little Sister by Patricia MacDonald Page A

It was the only photo he carried. As if she and her mother did not exist, had never existed.
    Beth stared at it for a moment, the old familiar resentment churning inside her. Gripping the wallet tightly, she pulled out the money and put that on the bureau. “More junk,” she muttered, tossing the wallet and the rest of its contents into the garbage can.
    She was suddenly aware that the cooking smells had faded away in the house. Opening the bedroom door, she listened and could hear Francie’s and Andrew’s voices in the kitchen. She heard another sound as well: the scraping of silverware against plates.
    After closing the bedroom door behind her, Beth walked down the hall and into the kitchen. Francie and Andrew were seated at the table, finishing up their meal. Two serving plates on the table held the hamburgers and potatoes, although the juice from the hamburgers was congealing around the meat. The salad which Beth had made was sitting, wilted and untouched, on the counter. Beth’s place at the table was empty except for the silverware she herself had placed there.
    This dinner was my idea, Beth thought. My idea to ask him here, to be nice, for Francie’s sake. Suddenly, like the one witch not invited to Sleeping Beauty’s christening, Beth wanted to get even.
    “Noah thinks he’s going to send his songs to Kenny Rogers and then Kenny is going to fly him to Nashville,” Andrew was saying with a sneer.
    “Do you want some pie?” Francie asked. “I made it.” She suddenly noticed that Beth was in the room. “Hi,” she said. Then she turned back to Andrew.
    Andrew looked quickly from Francie to Beth, who was still standing in the doorway, her arms rigid at her sides. Then he shrugged. “Sure. I guess so.”
    “Good,” said Francie happily, pushing her chair back and going to the refrigerator.
    “How ya doin’?” Andrew asked Beth, watching her stony expression with wary eyes.
    “Hello, Andrew,” Beth said in a tart voice.
    She strode across the kitchen and reached in front of Francie, who was cutting the pie on the countertop. Without saying, “Excuse me,” Beth jerked a plate from the cabinet above Francie’s head and slammed the cabinet door shut. She walked over to the salad bowl and heaped some on her plate. A slice of cucumber flew up and landed on the edge of Francie’s pie. Beth ignored it and walked over to the table. Francie made a noise of protest that stuck in her throat. She looked at Beth, who had dropped her plate on the table and stabbed a hamburger with her fork.
    Francie carried the two dishes of pie to the table and put one in front of Andrew and one in front of herself.
    “These are burned,” said Beth, dumping the hamburger on her own plate.
    Two red spots appeared on Francie’s cheeks, but she said nothing.
    Andrew began to gobble down his dessert. “Good pie,” he said through a mouthful of food.
    “Thanks,” said Francie. “It’s a pie I always used to make for my—”
    “What grade are you in school, Andrew?” Beth interrupted as she tore her potato apart with her fork and knife.
    Andrew swallowed the pie as if it were a wad of wet papier-mache and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He looked quickly over at Francie, who was staring down at her plate, her mouth turned down in a bitter line.
    “I’m a—uh, sophomore,” said Andrew.
    Beth nodded as if she were a state trooper examining an expired registration. “A sophomore,” she repeated.
    “Yes,” he said. He frowned at Francie, but the girl’s eyes were riveted to the bottle of milk on the table. Her face was white except for the spots of red in her cheeks.
    “You go to school and work, too, is that it?”
    “What do you mean?” said Andrew, nervously folding the comer of his paper napkin into triangle upon triangle. His eyes narrowed as he looked at her.
    “At the Seven-Eleven. You do work there, don’t you?”
    “Yeah, I work there.”
    “Part-time,” Francie cried in a shrill voice. She slammed