She couldn’t think of anything else that might interest the girls about her trip.
“What about Ladder?” Ben asked.
Lee frowned thoughtfully. “Its services are available to all children ten and older,” she said, “free through Life Healing.” Her voice stiffened. “Although”—her gesture indicated the girls—”I can’t see what good it does perfectly healthy children.”
Becca and Raquel gave serious attention to their food. Life healing was another sensitive issue.
“If it helps reduce alcoholism . . .” Ben said.
Lee nodded. “It has, a lot. Mr. M showed me the legal and medical statistics. They’re quite open about the problems they had for so long—their land and livelihood taken from them, their culture and beliefs denigrated and forbidden, their children taken from them in the old days, and brainwashed for years before being allowed to go home. The Crow Tribe came through better than lots, but even so . . .” She turned to Becca. “They call themselves the Apsáalooke, the ‘Children of the Large-Beaked Bird.’ I made a special effort to learn to say it in Crow. It seemed like something you’d like to know.”
Becca got from her chair, went around the table, and wrapping her arms around her mother’s neck, kissed her cheek. Raquel was there before Becca had finished, and added her own hug and kiss. “We’re glad you’re home, Mom,” Becca said.
“Yeah,” Raquel added. “We missed you. Are you going to have to be gone very much now?”
“From time to time. But I’m not worried. You’ll take good care of your dad, I know.”
“He didn’t cook as well while you were gone.” Raquel was back in her chair again, talking between bites. “He gave us limburger cheese and anchovie pizza for supper last night . . .”
Lee’s eyebrows raised.
“And the night before that, balut and stuffed dog!” She broke into giggles.
“He didn’t either,” Becca said to her mother, then turned to Raquel. “You don’t even know what limburger cheese is.”
“I do so! It’s a kind of cheese that really stinks!”
“Honey,” Lee said, “I’d rather you didn’t say ‘stinks’ at the table.” She looked at Ben. “What did you feed them?”
He grinned. “For supper? I didn’t. We ate at staff. For breakfast they got the usual: eggs, toast, cereal, and juice.”
“What did you get, Mom?” Raquel asked.
“Café food. I ate in the café next to the motel.” She turned to Raquel. “What were those other foods you named? Or did you make them up?”
“No, they’re real. Domingo Morgan spent last summer with his Filipino grandparents on Luzon, and he told us about it in human geography. I better not tell you what they are at the table though.” She made a face, then laughed. “Worse than limburger cheese and anchovies. He ate some before he knew what they were, and they tasted pretty good, he said. But if he’d known what balut was, he’d never have eaten it.”
“If you don’t eat your mashed potatoes and gravy,” her dad told her, “they’ll be cold.”
“I’ll just put them in the microwave.”
“Eat!”
She did then, finishing soon after the others.
“May I leave the table, Mom?” Becca asked.
“Before dessert?”
“Dad made cherry pie for you, and I don’t like cherry pie that much.”
“Ice cream goes with it,” her stepfather told her, “or by itself if you’d rather.”
“No thanks. I’m already full anyway. May I?”
Raquel passed on dessert too, and both of them left. It was her turn to be first on the computer, while Becca lay on the living room floor with a book. Lee and Ben remained in the breakfast nook over coffee.
“When’s your next trip?” Ben asked, speaking quietly, as they often did for privacy.
“In two weeks. To the Seattle office. I’ll fly up one afternoon, spend two days there, and fly back the next. It’s supposed to be pretty representative of the U.S. branches. Then I might be sent to Europe for a few days, to Rotterdam and Copenhagen.” She examined the coffee in her cup. “Did you miss me?”
Ben smiled. “You were only gone two days. Be gone four and I’ll miss you.”