“Don’t start anything,” Jayden whispered to Ashlyn. “This isn’t the day for it, believe me. You’ll understand when Elijah makes his announcement after breakfast.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ashlyn said and then lowered her voice. “There’s always tomorrow. I’m savin’ my demerits up until the last week, and then I’m going to use two of them on Bailey and Keelan.”

“Good mornin’.” Elijah caught Jayden’s eye and smiled when he started through the line.

“Mornin’ to you.” She smiled back at him. “Happy Independence Day.”

“Is it July Fourth?” Ashlyn asked as she put food on her tray. “Do we get to go to town and watch fireworks?”

“Do you want to do that?” Elijah asked.

“Of course I do,” Ashlyn answered. “Can we leave the Moonbeam girls at home?”

“Nope, it’s all or none,” Elijah answered.

“Well, crap!” Ashlyn carried her tray to her table and sat down.

Jayden was the last one to dish up food onto her tray and take it to the adult table. Elijah waited until she was seated and then tapped a spoon on the edge of his coffee mug. As usual, when he did that, all the noise in the whole dining hall ceased in a split second.

“In the past we have celebrated Independence Day right here at Piney Wood. If not one single girl got a demerit all day, we always had fireworks and then watermelon and a couple of freezers of homemade ice cream. Since all of you have been pretty good kids through the first half of this session, I’m going to change things up a little bit this year. After supper, we are going to make homemade ice cream and then let it set while we take all y’all into town to the football field and let you watch the show that the fire department puts on each year. Then we’ll come home to have our watermelon and ice cream. The rule about the demerits stands, though. If one of you gets out of line today, then we all stay home. I haven’t bought fireworks, so there will be none and we won’t churn ice cream or cut watermelons, either. So, I recommend that y’all all be on good behavior today.”

“Yes, sir!” the girls all chorused.

“What’s the chances we’ll actually do this tonight?” Diana whispered.

“Good, I hope,” Elijah said. “I talked to Henry and Mary on the phone last night, and they thought it might be smart to reward good behavior now. We’ve only had to send one girl away and it’s been a couple of weeks since anyone got a demerit.”

“I just hope they all behave today,” Novalene said. “If one of them gets out of line and we have to stay here, the others will get even, and I don’t imagine that it will be a pretty sight.”

Jayden thought about Ashlyn’s comments and shivered.

“Cold?” Elijah asked.

“Nope, just a little worried,” Jayden admitted.

“It pays to be concerned. Listen to them, buzzing like a bunch of bees at the idea of getting to go somewhere other than church on Sunday.” Novalene nodded toward the tables where the girls sat. “I plan on spending the rest of this day staying right with my two. It’s their day to do laundry and then clean bathrooms. I won’t let them out of my sight. Y’all would do well to do the same with your girls.”

Jayden wasn’t sure how she could do that and cook, too, but at least it was their day to clean the stalls, which would keep them away from the other girls. After they walked the horses, she would make them come to the kitchen and help her with supper even if she would rather have the kitchen to herself.

Elijah nudged her on the shoulder. “What are you thinking about?”

“Sorry, did you say something to me?” she asked.

“No, but you looked like you were a million miles away,” he said.

“Ashlyn says that Dynamite isn’t doing well. Keelan disagreed with her,” Jayden replied.

“It’s normal for them to get antsy about this time,” Novalene said. “If there’s going to be a multiple-girl problem, it usually happens about the halfway mark. I’m glad we’re taking them into town tonight. That might help.”

“Dynamite is almost forty years old, which is well past the expected life span of a horse,” Elijah said. “He’s been steadily slowing down this past year, and he has been off his feed lately.”

“Lord have mercy!” Jayden gasped. “I hope he doesn’t die while we’re here. Ashlyn would be devastated.”

“So would Keelan,” Novalene said. “She’s taken quite a fancy to the old boy.”

“He’s Rita’s favorite on the days when my girls clean the stalls, and Quinley has really taken a liking to him, also,” Diana said. “We’ll have a bunch of weeping girls to deal with if he goes over the Rainbow Bridge while we’re here.”

“Guess we’ve all got something to pray about in church,” Elijah said.

“Better not wait until then, since today is pretty important, too.” Diana’s tone was dead serious.

“Amen!” Jayden agreed and then called out to her girls, “Hey, Daydream Cabin girls, if you have time after you do the stalls this morning, you should check on our flower beds and then pull weeds from the garden behind the dining hall and then come help me in the kitchen.”

Ashlyn chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”

“What’s so funny?” Tiffany asked.

“There’s always tomorrow,” Ashlyn answered.

“What does that mean?” Carmella asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” Ashlyn promised.

Elijah always moved around among the three groups during the day, but that Saturday he kept special watch on the whole bunch of them. Bailey and Keelan spent most of their time in the laundry and then went over to clean the bathrooms. The Sunshine girls helped Elijah move the cattle from one pasture to another. At noon, they were all ready to eat and get after whatever they had on their lists for that afternoon.

“Things are going smoothly,” Elijah told Jayden when the dining hall had cleared out. “They’re all wound up about the fireworks show tonight and getting to leave the camp for a little while.”

“Have they realized that they’ll be going in the same uniforms they’ve worn to shovel crap, weed a garden, milk cows, and walk horses?” She carried a pot to the deep sink and rinsed it.

Elijah followed her with a chuckle and pointed out the window. “On that first day they were here, did you ever think you’d see them doing that?” He was so close to Jayden that his heart threw in an extra beat. He wanted to do more than flirt or nudge her with his shoulder at the dinner table. He visualized taking her in his arms and kissing her full lips until they looked bee stung, then scooping her up like a bride and . . .

The picture in his mind disappeared when she spoke. “I had my doubts as to whether any one of them would even be here after the first week.”

“Not me,” Elijah said. “I’m a little surprised that we even lost one out of the bunch. They all looked like little scared first-grade girls when I yelled at them to drop their suitcases. On my first session here, one girl hurled her bags at me like they were rockets. That got her the first demerit, even though she didn’t know the rules. She was in the Brewster County Jail before suppertime. This is a pretty calm bunch compared to that first one.”