Excerpt:
As she crept cautiously up the back stairs, careful to avoid making even the smallest sound, Judith felt certain she was on the verge of making some thrilling discovery in the attic.
Her suspicions had been born earlier that day, when Uncle Pete came to visit. Uncle Pete was her father's younger brother. Unlike her father, who scratched out a bare living cutting timber, laboring at the sawmill, or doing other grubby jobs as he could find them, Uncle Pete was a sharp dresser, a good-looking man in his early thirties and he was also a traveler, having just returned from more than a year in South America.
Judith liked her Uncle Pete. She admired him and envied him his life away from the squalor of the farm, the hard work, dirt and poor food. But there was more than that.
There had been something in the looks Uncle Pete and her mother had exchanged when he arrived at the farm. It could have had something to do with sex, she sensed, but that was a foreign area to her. Sex was never mentioned in her family. She knew it had something to do with her and with the making of babies, but that was all she knew on the subject and, as far as her parents were concerned, that was all she was going to learn.
As she crept cautiously up the back stairs, careful to avoid making even the smallest sound, Judith felt certain she was on the verge of making some thrilling discovery in the attic.
Her suspicions had been born earlier that day, when Uncle Pete came to visit. Uncle Pete was her father's younger brother. Unlike her father, who scratched out a bare living cutting timber, laboring at the sawmill, or doing other grubby jobs as he could find them, Uncle Pete was a sharp dresser, a good-looking man in his early thirties and he was also a traveler, having just returned from more than a year in South America.
Judith liked her Uncle Pete. She admired him and envied him his life away from the squalor of the farm, the hard work, dirt and poor food. But there was more than that.
There had been something in the looks Uncle Pete and her mother had exchanged when he arrived at the farm. It could have had something to do with sex, she sensed, but that was a foreign area to her. Sex was never mentioned in her family. She knew it had something to do with her and with the making of babies, but that was all she knew on the subject and, as far as her parents were concerned, that was all she was going to learn.