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she had her earphones on and the volume up.

As Mandy worked and her anger subsided, she thought, "I gotta call my Nananne. Aunt Bertha will know what to do. But no, this is something we have to work out."

As she finished putting together ingredients for dinner, she remembered her first days in Abbeville, the loneliness and feeling like an outsider. She'd grown up in a well-respected New Orleans Creole family and attended college on full scholarship in Lafayette where she had met Elias Carrillioux, a Cajun agriculture major who impressed her with his gentle nature and love for family. During her student teaching, she was assigned to a school in Abbeville and enjoyed the environment of a small-town, taking a job there upon graduation. Her family objected, saying that a member of the Dawkins family belonged in New Orleans. Amanda Dawkins would have none of it. She and Eli dated and married to the horror of her family. Mandy, in her reverie, could hear the music of their first dance and began to hum to yourself. "Ain't no sunshine when you're gone, only darkness every day."

Ryan burst into the room with an excited look on his face. "Mom, mom, I've got an idea," he said, "now I've already talked to my sisters and they think it's a great idea. Instead of Gerald living here temporarily, why don't we make it permanent? You know I want a brother and besides he's here anyway with no place else to go."

"Ryan, you about scared me to death busting in here like that. Besides, don't you have a science report to finish? You go get to work young man and we'll talk about that later."

Eli stomped out of the house, slamming the door behind him. Ignoring the steady downpour, he stepped down off the screened porch over to his truck. To the steady rhythm of the wiper blades, he made his daily rounds of the rice's fields. Looking at acre after acre of flat rice stalks, he remembered how the past few months had gone. The shock of the storm, the horror of Alphonse Fourcal's death, and Gerald moving in, bringing with him a new set of problems and disruption. It was all Mandy's idea, "save the world", but in reality it seemed to be destroying their world.

In class the next day, Gerry sat at his desk staring out the window. He hadn't done his homework again. He thought, "What's the point? I'll be moving to a different family, probably in a different town with a new school." Ryan sat two desks behind Gerry. Seeing him fall apart is hard and now Mrs. G. was chewing him up for daydreaming instead

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