She leaned back and squinted with displeasure when her unruly, rusty-colored curls refused to cooperate, poking out all over like a bunch of broken bedsprings. "Aargh!" she muttered, throwing down her comb and watching it bounce off the wood floor with a ping before landing on the braided wool rug."Supper's almost ready!" wailed the youngest of the Kane sisters, Abbie Ann, from the foot of the stairs."Abbie Ann, you'll damage my hearing," Jacob Kane muttered.Even from the upstairs bedroom, Hannah heard her father's newspaper rattle and sensed that his tone bordered on brusqueness. She pictured him sitting in his plush blue velvet chair, as he always did at six o'clock, the Sandy Shores Tribune spread in his lap, his reading spectacles perched low on his longish nose. "Why is it that at seventeen, you're still screaming like a banshee?""Seventeen, Papa? Have you forgotten that I turned eighteen in May?"There was a lengthy pause. "Eighteen? Are you sure?"Her high-pitched giggle drifted upward.
