Aly's House Read Free Page A

owe the bank or the farm will be posted for auction.”
    Stunned, Aly stared at Elizabeth for confirmation. “But that’s impossible! My dad wouldn’t foreclose on Cedar Hill.”
    “I’m afraid you’re wrong, Aly,” Elizabeth answered in weary resignation. “We haven’t been able to keep up with even the interest on the principal for some time. We’re way behind in our payments. Marshall came home to try to get his father to declare bankruptcy rather than to let the bank foreclose, but Sy won’t hear of it.”
    Aly still could not believe it. “There’s been a mistake,” she declared obstinately. “What would the bank want with Cedar Hill?”
    Moving his mother gently aside, Marshall stepped through the door. “That’s what I intend to find out,” he said furiously. Aly backed away, awed as much by his new grandeur as by his rage.
    “Where are you going, son?” Elizabeth asked anxiously.
    “To see Lorne Kingston,” he replied, making for the porch steps. “He’s going to explain why he wants our farm!”
    Aly, after a moment’s hesitation, propelled her thin, sun-browned legs after him. “Marshall—” she called, following him down the steps and across the yard. “Let me go with you. Maybe I can talk to him.”
    Without altering his pace, Marshall laughed bitterly. “You think your father would listen to you, Aly? You?”
    She winced from his taunt, but she persisted. “You won’t get in to see him without me,” she warned. “Dad will be expecting you. He’s probably already alerted the security guards. I may not be able to talk him into changing his mind, but I can at least get you into his office.”
    Marshall halted to consider her argument, holding her gaze thoughtfully. Then suddenly, as if he’d never really seen it before, the brown eyes shifted in curious study of her face. Embarrassment seared through her. She had read the same expression on the faces of so many. No, she didn’t look at all like a Kingston , she was always tempted to say. She was well aware of the joke that explained her presence in the Kingston household—that at birth she had been placed in the wrong crib at the hospital. She showed how little she cared by working hard at being as unlike any other member of her family as possible.
    But now, having caught Marshall’s attention for the first time in her eighteen years, she wished she’d agreed to braces for her slightly protruding teeth, to a permanent for her hair, to the cream that Victoria vowed would vanish the pox of freckles covering her face. She wished she could have forced down Annie Jo’s unappetizing fare at home, the monotonous lunches at school. Then there might have been some curves to her figure, something to improve the lines of her T-shirt and jeans.
    “Why don’t you ever curl your hair?” Marshall asked suddenly, impatiently flicking aside her bangs, touching her for the first time in their lives. “How do you see with that mop hanging down in your eyes?”
    The bangs had been her one attempt to conceal her freckles, especially abundant on her forehead. “I—I’m going to the barbershop next week.”
    The dark brows quirked in reluctant humor. “The barbershop?”
    “It gets Mother’s goat for me to go to a barber.”
    “God, Aly, why do you cut off your nose to spite your face? All right,” he said, his tone taking them back to business, “come on then. You drive your car, and I’ll take mine.”
    Aly followed the Ford in her sports car, her eyes never straying from the dark head in front of her. Blast her father! If this were true, the Kingstons would never be able to dig out of this hole with Marshall. She could read his hate and anger for anything remotely connected with the family name in every rigid movement of the broad shoulders, every turn of the sculpted profile. For the moment at least, she would not allow herself even to consider a foreclosure on Cedar Hill—what it would mean to the Waynes and to herself. She still