Leaving the shells to deal with later, I hurried inside and checked the fridge. A large bowl of clean shrimp with plastic wrap over it sat on the top shelf. Opening the top freezer next, I found it overflowing with shrimp, but it still wasn’t enough to account for five coolers. I headed to the laundry room and opened the chest freezer, which held a massive amount of shrimp. I stood there staring down at the contents as the icy air seeped out, not having a clue what to do with that much shrimp —or with Pa. This was clearly not normal behavior.

“Oh, good. You’re home!” Pa spoke from behind me.

I jumped, dropping the heavy lid. It slammed with a loud thud as I turned my back to the freezer to face him.

“I’m going to put in a few hours at the barn before dark.” Pa tapped his knuckles on the doorframe and was gone in a blink.

I hurried through the house to catch up with him, wondering where all that exuberant energy was coming from. “You get some sleep today?”

Pa paused by the door and let out a jaunty chuckle. “You think that shrimp cleaned itself? I ain’t had time for sleep.” He waved a hand dismissively as if sleep were trivial and there was absolutely nothing wrong with having enough shrimp to start our own seafood market.

The door slapped shut behind him, leaving me with the lion’s share of responsibilities as always. Chores needed to be divided and conquered, supper to be figured out that would no way be including shrimp, and then I would need to go get Boss afterwards, but fatigue nailed me to my spot until I remembered the batch of double chocolate chip cookies from Miss Wise that I’d left in the truck. I found just enough gumption to go fetch them and call the young’uns to the porch, not caring if it spoiled their supper or not.

Before I could take the first bite of my cookie, we all turned toward the sound of a vehicle.

“Here comes fancy pants,” Peg garbled between bites, pointing his cookie at the black car slowly coming up the drive.

There was still a good two hours before I was to meet Vance at the theater to pick up Boss.

Cookie clutched in my hand, I sprinted off the porch as Boss opened the passenger door. “Something wrong?”

“The movie projector broke down,” Vance answered as he climbed out of the driver’s seat. He closed the door as if he might stay awhile.

“But we went over to Vance’s and played Atari!” Boss nearly squealed. I heard Peg huff in jealousy. “Cookies?” Boss asked, eyes rounding as he licked his lips.