Dollar Runaways

Chapter 16: Mountain Rains

THE NEXT MORNING, I faced the wakeup call from Mom and then dragged myself along through the feeding of all the animals. 'I think I'm sort of getting used to this...' I thought to myself as I finished putting the feed bucket back on the shelf. 'I wonder what Madison had to do?'

I wondered if maybe she'd been pressed into helping mom with the cows. I walked into the milking shed and found Mom and Kaitlyn, but no Madison. "Good morning," Kaitlyn said to me pleasantly.

"Good morning Aunt Kaitlyn," I said.

"Aunt, huh?" She said looking at Mom. "I can go with that." She smiled. "Good morning to you too then," said.

"Where is Madison?" I asked curiously.

"I think Gloria has her and Mark mucking horse stalls." I wrinkled my nose up at that right as Gloria walked up.

"Don't worry, when you turn ten, you'll be doing that with them." She said with a smile and a wink.

"Good thing I'm only seven then!" I said with a smile back.

She laughed and Mom said, "Why don't you go ahead and go shower for breakfast Ash."

"Okay," I said and walked to the house noticing there were some really dark clouds beginning to roll in. 'I wonder if they get tornadoes here?' I thought somewhat nervously. We had a couple close calls a few years back and I wasn't a fan of them at all!

'At least they have a basement here!'

I walked upstairs and quickly took a shower, hoping to not get in the way of Madison... Who I hoped wanted to take a shower? Mucking stalls did not sound like fun at all. 'If I was Tony, I'd be mucking them right alongside them!' I thought. 'I wonder if Madison would have liked Tony...?' I had used a shower cap to keep my hair dry since I didn't need to wash my hair. As a result, I was in and out of the shower pretty quickly. I made sure I unlocked the door for Madison to get in and then started digging through my clothes for something to wear. I started with a pair of panties that I pulled on and then started digging through my armoire.

'Madison said she likes dresses... And Mom is going to put our hair up in the French Braid... Well, if Madison wants it. I don't know if she just said that yesterday to humor the little girl or not. But she might wear a dress... Which means I want to wear a dress.'

That narrowed things down to only ten choices. I'd worn a couple other dresses already, so they were out. I settled on a plaid dress that was made of pink and white plaid seersucker fabric. I thought it felt really light and airy and liked the way it had a cute bow on the front of it that was attached to the belt tie in the back. I managed to pull it over my head when I heard, "you need help zipping that up?"

I nearly wet my panties at that point. She could have easily tumbled onto my secret right there and then!

I managed to not shout out, but said, "If you could please... I can't reach it I don't think."

Madison came from behind me barefoot and in the jeans, she must have been mucking in still. I knew she would have had boots over everything though, so she was probably just dusty. "Actually, let me wash my hands again really quick..." She was back a moment later and I felt her zip the back up for me. "Would you like me to tie the bow too?"

"Please," I said.

"There you go. Now turn around so I can see your dress!"

"Thank you," I said and turned for her.

She sighed, "I miss being able to fit in cute dresses like that."

"But it's got to be cool to be older and able to fit in older dresses too?" I asked.