“She’s good at it. Must take after her old man.” He winked at Lily.
“She said her mom was too.”
He had a wistful smile. “She was. Poor kid.” I realized that he must have worked here when Joanna was here. Many, if not most, of the people who worked JoXander had known Joanna and had only positive things to say about her. She was described as vivacious and kind.
Dylan watched Lily count a little more and then said, “I’ve gotta run. I’ll see you around, Bella.”
I nodded. “Bye.”
Later I took Lily to my office, gathered supplies, and then took her to the conference room.
“This will be your own workstation.” I put some large books on a chair so she could sit up at the table. Then I put a bunch of paper, pens, a ruler, and paperclips on the table.
“What am I doing?” Lily asked as she got in the chair.
“Well, you said you like art, you can make pretty pictures.”
“What are you doing?”
I opened my laptop. “I’m working on a project your dad has to sell his cosmetics in France.”
“Where’s that?” Lily pulled a piece of paper in front of her and picked up a pen.
“It’s across the ocean.”
“I’ve never been there.” Lily drew on her paper.
“Me neither.”
“Ms. Hanson,” Dana poked her head inside the conference room. “Mr. LaPierre is on the phone.”
“I’ll take it here, thank you.” I stood and went to the phone in the conference room. I answered and began speaking French to the importing contact we had in Paris.
Lily’s eyes widened as she looked at me. I winked and continued the conversation. Luckily, it was short.
“What were you saying? Those were crazy words,” Lily said when I got off the phone.
“That was a different language called French.”
“Why do they talk like that?”
Good question. I could speak French but didn’t know why there were different languages, other than the Bible story about the Tower of Babel. “They just have different words than we do.”
“What were you saying?”
I sat next to her at the table. “We were talking about that business deal of your dad’s.”
“How did you learn all those words?”
“I learned it from my mom.”
“My mommy is in heaven.” She said it matter-of-factly. I supposed she was only two or three when her mother died. I felt sad that she probably didn’t remember her mother much. I was grateful that I’d had mine for as long as I did, though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t envious of all the mothers that lived to be a ripe old age.
“My mommy is in heaven too,” I told her.
She looked at me with wide eyes. “Really?”
“Yes. She went there last year.” I felt the tickle in my throat as sadness swept through me. I swallowed it down, not wanting to cry in front of Blake’s daughter.
“Maybe they’re friends there,” Lily said. I loved how sweet that sounded. “My daddy says everyone loves my mommy up there.”
“Your daddy is very smart.”
“Where’s your daddy?”
This wasn’t a topic I wanted to go into, but I couldn’t not answer it. “I don’t know. He went away when I was little.”
“In heaven?”
“No. Just away from my mom and me.” I never got the details about my father, except that he wasn’t interested in being one. He’d left early on and I’d never heard from him. I didn’t even have pictures. My mother had said she was perfectly happy to raise me by herself. She was good at it too, so I never felt like I missed out on anything by not having a father. With my mother gone, it might have been nice to have other family. But if he was an asshole, I’d rather be alone.
Lily frowned. “That’s not nice.”
I gave her a wan smile. “No.”
“My daddy takes care of me. And Mrs. Dougies. And my grandma and grandpa.”
“A lot of people love you.”
“Yep.” Lily drew a circle with more circles around it that made me think of a flower.
“Would you like to learn French?” I asked her.
“Ok.”
“Is that a flower you’re drawing?”
“Yep. I like flowers. My name is a flower.”
“In French, flowers are ‘les fleurs.’ And a lily is ‘lis.’”
“Lay flur lee.”
I smiled at her pronunciation. “J’aime les fleurs is French for I like flowers.”
“Jem lay flur.”
“Good. If you want to tell people your name, say ‘je m’appelle Lily.’”
“Jemaple Lily.”
I patted her back. “Yes. That’s good.”
“How do you say daddy?”
“They call father ‘le père,’ but children usually all their dads ‘papa.’”
“I’m going to do France work for my papa too.” She pulled together the papers and paper clips.
“He’ll appreciate that,” I said, smiling at her. It wasn’t a surprise that Blake would have such a sweet kid. He was a kind man. He was a bit intense, but I always thought that was because he was deeply emotional. A man who was so devoted to his wife that he felt like he’d cheated on her even two years after she died, was a man of deep feeling. He loved his daughter the same way, I suspected.