Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter Read Free Book Online

thought this was a holiday, but she insisted.” Adele had trouble catching her breath. “I never did see a child who liked school so much.”
    “When are you going to listen?” she shouted when we were in the car. “And you missed lunch.”
    “I ate at the store.”
    “Did you pay?”
    “I didn’t have money.”
    She took a few dollars from her purse. “You go back up there, pay the man, thank him, and tell him you’re sorry.”
    “By myself?” I asked. Seeing her stern face, I did not complain any further.
    I was furious that I had to walk up that hated road and then back again. As I kicked stones along the way, I had no idea that I would be living with her for only another week. I have never been able to find any official reason why we were returned to Florida a second time. Perhaps someone reported my being alone by the side of the road and that is what led to our removal. Maybe the neighbors reported something. Grandpa had started coming around again while we were still there—he did live with Adele again after we left—and maybe the authorities found out. Adele did receive foster care payments from Florida during that time, which is unusual, so money might have been the issue. All I know is that at the end of April, Luke and I were back at the airport. This time I carried Katie wrapped in her pink blanket. Nobody was ever again going to talk me into leaving without my precious dolls. Adele kept wiping away tears as she snapped pictures.
    Lena Jamison led us onto the plane. I was so upset, I was shivering, so she wrapped her sweater around me. “I didn’t know you were afraid of flying,” she said, completely misunderstanding me.
    She folded her hands across a manila envelope in her lap. “What’s in there?” I asked.
    “Your papers.”
    “Does it say where we’re going?”
    “No.”
    “Are we going back to the Paces’ house?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Why can’t we stay with Adele?”
    Ms. Jamison puffed out with annoyance. “Honey, we need to keep you safe.”
    Again, she missed the point. Adele had fussed over us even more than our mother had. She gave us more attention, food, and affection than anyone ever had. It seemed logical to me that Luke and I would be safest with someone who actually loved us.
     

     
    When we arrived in Florida, Luke and I went our separate ways—he ended up at another congested baby farm, while I “lucked out” and got to be the only child in the home of Boris and Doreen Potts, an older couple who lived in a double-wide mobile home surrounded by a chain-link fence that seemed to buckle into itself like a Slinky. The strawberries in the field next door smelled so ripe that I would press my nose through a diamond of wire to sniff the fragrant fruit.
    The Pottses had a revolving wash line in the backyard that I enjoyed spinning when it was empty. I often sat in the shade of their tangerine tree and played with my dolls. I had my own room, and I folded my Precious Moments sleeping bag at the end of the bed. Sometimes they would leave gifts on my sleeping bag, like a pair of jelly sandals with silver sparkles that I thought were the greatest shoes I ever had.
    Mr. Potts barely talked to me, but I was always questioning him. When he dumped ketchup on his eggs, I asked, “Why are you doing that?”
    “I like it that way.”
    I wrinkled my nose. “That’s disgusting!”
    “It isn’t polite to comment on someone else’s food,” Mrs. Potts chided.
    Mostly, though, Mrs. Potts liked me because I entertained myself.
    “Could you turn the sprinkler on?” I asked on a blistering summer day.
    “It’s going to rain,” Mrs. Potts said, but then she relented because she knew it would keep me amused for a while.
    I put on my bathing suit and jumped around as it sprayed back and forth. A dark cloud hovered nearby, but I kept playing until I was forced to stop. I felt rain on my shoulders and looked up to see if I would be called inside. The sun still baked the yard