She wondered if the wall would always be there. Didn't Tom sense her disappointment and the reluctance of her own restraint?
Her eyes caught a flicker of movement across the yard, and she looked up to see Sammy and Davey walking toward her from the direction of the barn. She retreated back into her shell of caution.
Sammy had bothered her very little of late. He seemed to sense the change in her, to be aware of a greater strength and resistance. She had often noticed him watching her with a kind of wondering calculation, and it was almost entirely for his benefit that she maintained her secrecy and watchfulness.
Only once in the past weeks had he attempted to annoy her. They had been momentarily alone in the kitchen, and Sammy had caught at her arms from behind. She had whirled and broken free with the swiftness of a wildcat, to face him with a knife snatched from the table. Sammy had gaped at her for a second or two, and then had left the kitchen without a word.
She regarded Sammy as the greatest danger, but even Davey's dim mind appeared to have grasped the change in relationships. And he had somehow seized on it to widen his break from Sammy's control. As if in defiance of his brother, Davey favored Fran with small, clumsy kindnesses, but she knew Davey could not be depended upon. His moods were mercurial, ranging from swift, hysterical excitement to long intervals of sullen gloom.
Sammy came to a stop several feet away, his pale eyes fixed on Fran and a somehow startled expression on his wizened face. The intentness of his gaze held her for an instant as she turned away to avoid him.
He blurted, "Golly, Fran, you're pretty!"
She felt a shocked dismay. Looking at herself in the stained mirror in her bedroom, she had unselfconsciously noticed a ripening and softening, and it was unpleasant to discover that Sammy had noticed it too. She caught the blurred, cloudy movement of his thoughts and shuddered as she sensed the impulses from which his admiration sprang. She was only dimly sensitive to ordinary minds; there was too great a difference—a lack of harmony. For the most part she avoided the murky, alien contact. But in that instant she understood Sammy and saw his motivations in a new light.
"You tend to your chores and leave me alone!" she told him sharply, breathless and upset. She hurried away from the porch, toward the chickens in the yard, clutching the plate of scraps and crumbs she had brought with her from the kitchen.