Dragonfly Secret by Carolyn J. Gold Page B

thinks I’m trying to poison him.”
    Mother laughed. “It’s the sugar. He read how it poisons the system. He’s all right. He’s getting old and set in his ways, but we’re used to him.”
    Aunt Louise didn’t look convinced. She started to say something and then changed her mind. “Why don’t you children help yourselves to cake and ice cream? You can sit on the back step to eat it while your mother and I talk.”
    Which is how we came to be sitting on the porch with Allison, listening to Gramps swearing out behind the garage and Aunt Louise raising her voice to Mother in the house behind us, while the ice cream melted into slushy puddles in the bowls between us.
    â€œIt’s so obvious, Katherine. He should be in a home!” Aunt Louise’s words whined out from the front room.
    â€œHe is in a home,” Mother said mildly. I could imagine her taking a little sip from her coffee cup before she went on. “He’s in our home, with his grandchildren. Where he wants to be.”
    â€œThat’s not what I meant and you know it. A home. A retirement home. Where he can get the best care . . .”
    There was a sharp clink as a coffee cup hit a saucer. Mother’s voice sounded ominously calm. “Are you saying he isn’t getting the care he needs living with us, Louise?”
    â€œNo, of course not. But I meant professional care. Listen to him out there. He should be seeing a psychologist. And besides, what sort of influence is he having on your children?”
    â€œProbably the same sort of influence he had on you and me when we were growing up. He’s happy where he is, Louise, and we’re happy to have him.”
    I glanced over at Jessie, wishing that Gramps would cuss a little louder and drown out the argument in the house. There are some things kids shouldn’t have to hear. It was too late, though. Jessie was hanging on every word, a worried little frown pulling the freckles together on her forehead.
    â€œThey won’t make Gramps go away, will they?” she whispered.
    â€œMy mother says he should go live with the other old people where he belongs,” Allison chimed in. “She says if your mother won’t make him go, she will.”
    â€œShe can’t, can she?” Jessie asked me, her eyes dark and scared.
    â€œOf course not.” I tried to sound sure and confident, but inside I wondered. Could Aunt Louise do that? Because if she could, it was as good as done.

Chapter Two
    â€œW hy are we turning here?” Mother asked as Gramps slowed the station wagon down. We weren’t even halfway home.
    In the backseat, Jessie sat up and looked around, wondering what was happening. I looked, too, but there wasn’t much to see. An unmarked crossroad led off toward some wooded hills and on one corner a small crowd of black-and-white cows swished their tails and stared back at us.
    â€œI figured I ought to go see how the old farm looks while I still can.” Gramps sounded sour, and I wondered if he knew what his daughters had been talking about while he mowed Aunt Louise’s lawn.
    He drove more slowly now that we had left the main highway. There were a few farmhouses along the way, usually set far back from the road so that all we saw were neat brown roofs and maybe the top of a white-painted wall. They were mostly dairy farms, with lazy herds of milk cows grazing in the sunshine. Some of the fields had been planted with hay or alfalfa, and the stubble looked as even and green as lawn.
    I remembered when we’d last been out to the farm. Jessie had been a baby, and Dad had walked around with Gramps, saying we ought to all move out there and try to make it a working farm again, with chickens and pigs and milk cows.
    Gramps had walked a little quicker, pointing out the spring and the stone silo for storing feed through the winter, and talking about how he and my grandmother had built the