There was no point lying to a kid who could see straight through you. “Yes.”
She considered that, picking at a loose thread on her blanket. “Why doesn’t Billie have kids?”
Shit.
I turned my attention back to the TV. I didn’t know how to explain all that, with its baggage and messy history, to a five-year-old who clung to Billie. I tried anyway. “Remember how Billie took care of her sisters when she grew up? Well, I think that she was sort of already kind of a mom.”
Andi mulled this over with the philosophical air of a sick child who’d spent too many hours bored on the couch. “Yesterday when she was talking to Mrs. McDonald, she called me her little girl.”
“She cares a lot about you, and I know she’ll always be there for you.”
Seeing how attached she was, seeing the way this conversation was headed only cemented the fact that Billie’s time here needed to end. The girls were clearly getting too attached. And I wasn’t doing any better. After the weekend we spent crossing every line imaginable, I couldn’t have her here. Every time she walked by, I wanted to reach out and grab her, to touch her, to kiss her.
Keeping my hands to myself was difficult enough before we’d spent the entire night and morning behaving like a real married couple, now it was damn near impossible. And then the way she’d taken care of Andi, made the doctor’s appointment and we all went to it together, got ice cream on the way home, it was so wholesome and felt like a real family. I didn’t want the girls getting the wrong idea.
She nodded and looked at the TV. It was quiet for several minutes, and I had just taken a sip of my coffee when she asked, “What’s cuntvenience?”
I almost choked. “What?”
“Billie was talking to Mrs. McDonald and said?—”
Fucking Billie.
“Oh, I think she was trying to say convenience.”
“Yeah, that’s what she said she meant, but she said cuntvenience first, then she said, I mean convenience.”
“It’s a bad word. You shouldn’t say that. Billie should not have said that in front of you.” I sighed, then addressed something that I’d been wanting to talk to Andi about. “I’m sorry she spoke to Mrs. McDonald in front of you. I hope it didn’t make you feel uncomfortable. Sometimes Billie doesn’t think before she speaks, especially when she’s sticking up for people she cares about.”
When I heard what Billie did, I was worried it embarrassed Andi even more than she’d already been. I would have handledit differently. I would have made an appointment to speak to her teacher in private.
A grin lifted on Andi’s face, and I realized I got it all wrong. “I didn’t feel uncomfortable. I wasn’t the one getting in trouble, Mrs. McDonald was. And, don’t worry, Billie wasn’t mean, she was funny. When Mrs. McDonald said that I was fine at lunch, so that’s why she didn’t let me go see the nurse when I said I didn’t feel good, Billie pretended like she was a doctor and knew something no other doctors knew.”
I chuckled, yeah that sounded like Billie.
“Mrs. McDonaldismean, and Billie just told her she can’t be mean anymore. And Billie told her I wouldn’t lie about having to use the bathroom and said I know my colors, numbers, alphabet, can write, read, and do double digit addition and subtraction, so Mrs. McDonald isn’t teaching me anything.” Andi shrugged her tiny shoulders. “And she isn’t teaching me anything, so Billie wasn’t lying when she said that.”
I grinned, at first thinking it was a joke, but then looked at Andi. “Wait, do you actually know all those things?”
Andi nodded.
“Who taught you?”
“Grammy used to have me do Brainthelete thirty minutes a day.”
“Brainthelete?”
She nodded.
“What’s Brainthelete?”
“It’s an online brain training app for kids with an IQ of a hundred and forty or more.”
I stared at my daughter. I knew she was smart, that nothing got past her, and thought shemightbe a genius, but I didn’t realize that she actually was. “Your Grammy didn’t tell me about the app, I’m sorry. Do you want to do it still?”
She sniffed and wiped her nose with the tissue. “Yeah, I do. I miss it.”
“Okay.” Shit. I wished I would have known. I wondered why Maureen didn’t tell me. Was it a test to see if I could figure it out? If it was, I clearly failed.
