Her full name was Melinda Kay Burch, but they all called her Mink.Her full name was Melinda Kay Burch, but they all called her Mink. Her step-father had begun calling her that when she had been caught trying to shoplift a mink coat from a store in a nearby city. Mink had been caught on several occasions trying to pull similar stunts and had been in and out of reform schools since the age of eleven. Mink's mother did everything she knew to do for her, but there was a wild streak in her that it seemed impossible to tame. Her natural father had been of no help at all, and most everyone attributed Mink's proclivities to his influence on her. Mink's mother had left her father when Mink was fifteen years old on the advice of the social services department who believed him responsible for most of Mink's problems. Not quite three months after their divorce was final she had met Jim and they had married shortly thereafter. Jim and Anne had gotten along well from the start. Anne had a tendency to be rather weak and indecisive where Mink was concerned and needed a strong man as a mate. Jim was just that, a tall, slim but muscular man of simple ways and tastes who had grown up on his father's farm and had taken it over upon his death. It had been a dairy farm at one time, but now the milking barn was used mainly for the storage of hay for the beef cattle and horses that Jim raised and sold at the market. |