The next morning Lexie finished her cereal and put the bowl in the sink. From the back of the house she could hear her mom turn on the faucet, and she knew she had a long wait before they left for the mall. Her mom loved to take long showers.
The doorbell rang and she walked into the living room, dragging her boa behind her. She moved to the big front window and pushed the lace curtain aside. A man in jeans and a striped shirt stood on the porch. Lexie stared at him a moment, then let the curtain fall back i
n place. She wrapped her boa around her neck and walked across the room to the front entrance. She wasn’t supposed to open the door for strangers, but even though the man standing on the porch had on black sunglasses, he wasn’t a stranger. She knew who he was. She’d seen him on the TV, and last year Mr. Wall and his friends had come to her school to sign their names on some of the kids’ shirts and notebooks and stuff. Lexie had been way at the back of the gym and hadn’t gotten anybody’s name on anything.
He’d probably come to sign some of her stuff now, she thought as she opened the door. Then she looked up-way up.
John removed his sunglasses and stuffed them in the pocket of his polo shirt. The door opened and he looked down-way down. Almost as shocking as finding a child in Georgeanne’s house was the little girl staring up at him wearing pink snakeskin cowboy boots, a little pink skirt, a purple polka-dot T-shirt, and a wild green boa around her neck. But her electric clothing was nothing compared to her face. “Ahh… hi,” he said, taken back by the powder blue eye shadow, bright pink cheeks, and shiny red lips. “I’m looking for Georgeanne Howard.”
“My mom’s in the shower, but you can come in.” She turned and walked into the living room. A scraggly ponytail high on the back of her head swayed with each step of her boots.
“Are you sure?” John didn’t know very much about children, and absolutely nothing about little girls, but he did know that they weren’t supposed to invite strangers into the house. “Georgeanne might not like it when she finds out you let me in,” he said, but then, he figured she probably wouldn’t like finding him in her house whether she was in the shower or not.
The little girl glanced over her shoulder. “She won’t mind. I’ll go get my stuff,” she said, and disappeared around a corner, presumably to get her stuff. Whatever that meant.
John slipped Georgeanne’s checkbook into his back pocket and stepped inside the house. The checkbook was an excuse. His curiosity had brought him here. After Georgeanne had left the banquet last night, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. He closed the door behind him and walked into the living room, immediately feeling out of his element, like the time he’d bought underwear for an old girlfriend at Victoria’s Secret.
The house was filled with the pastel colors and fussy decorations feared by even the most confident heterosexual man. Her flowery couch had lace pillows that matched the curtains. There were vases of daisies and roses and baskets of dried flowers. Some of the photographs sitting around had angels on the silver frames. He kind of liked that and wondered if he should worry about himself.
“I’ve got some good stuff,” the little girl said as she pushed a miniature shopping cart made of orange plastic into the living room. She sat on the couch, then patted the cushion next to her.
Feeling even more out of place, he sat next to Georgeanne’s little girl. He looked into her face and tried to determine how old she was, but he wasn’t any good at guessing a kid’s age. Her makeup job didn’t help any.
“Here,” she said, plucking a T-shirt with a dalmatian on the front from her basket and handing it to him.
“What’s this for?”
“You have to sign it.”
“I do?” he asked, feeling huge next to the little girl.
She nodded and gave him a green marker.
John really didn’t want to sign the kid’s shirt. “Your mom might get mad.”
“Nuh-uh. That’s my Saturday shirt.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” He shrugged and took the cap from the marker. “What’s your name?”
Her brows lowered over her dark blue eyes, and she looked at him as if he were a few sandwiches short of a picnic. “Lexie.” Then she pronounced it again just in case he didn’t get it the first time. “Leexxiiiie. Lexie Mae Howard.”
Howard? Georgeanne hadn’t married the child’s father. He wondered what kind of man she’d been involved with. What kind of man abandoned his daughter? He flipped the shirt over as if he were planning to write on the back. “Why do you want me to ruin your perfectly good shirt, Lexie Mae Howard?”
“‘Cause the other kids got stuff that you wrote on and I don’t.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant, but he thought he’d better ask Georgeanne before he marked up her daughter’s shirt.
“Brett Thomas has lots of stuff. He showed me in school last year.” She sighed heavily and her shoulders drooped. “He gots a cat too. Do you have a cat?”
“Ahh… no. No cat.”
“Mae gots a cat,” she confided as if he knew Mae. “His name is Bootsie ‘cause he gots white boots on his feet. He hides from me when I go to Mae’s. I used to think he didn’t like me, but Mae says he runs away ’cause he’s shy.” She grasped the end of her boa, held it up for him to see, then shook it. “This is how I get him, though. He chases it and I grab him real tight.”
If John hadn’t known before that this little girl was Georgeanne’s daughter, the more he listened to her talk, the more obvious it became. She talked quickly about wanting a cat. Then the subject moved to dogs and somehow progressed to mosquito bites. While she talked, John studied her. He thought she must resemble her father because he didn’t think she looked all that much like Georgeanne. Maybe their mouths were similar, but not much else.