“Is it?”
“Yes. You’re very tall, and you have nice clothes, and you looked at my mama like she was a cupcake in a room full of vegetables.”
He blinks.
Then he laughs.
It’s not a big laugh, but it still makes his whole face change. Not all the way. Just enough that he doesn’t look quite so scary.
“I looked at your mother like she was a cupcake?”
“Yes,” I say. “A fancy one. With swirly frosting.”
“I see.”
“And she looked at you like she forgot her own name, which is weird because she knows a lot of things.”
His eyes move over my head, probably looking for Mama.
She’s near the feed table talking to someone with a camera. She’s smiling, but she keeps rubbing her fingers against her palm when she thinks no one is looking.
I see it, though.
I always see it.
“Mama needs a husband,” I tell him.
His attention comes back to me. “Does she?”
I nod. “But not Rory.”
“Who’s Rory?”
“He works here. He’s nice, and he can carry heavy stuff, but he’s not right.”
“What makes him not right?”
I think about that for a second.
“He listens to Mama too much.”
Mr. Moretti’s eyebrows lift.
“She needs someone who doesn’t listen when she says she’s fine,” I explain. “Because sometimes she says that when her fingers and toes are white, or when her feet hurt, or when she’s been outside too long, or when she’s sad about an animal dying but doesn’t want me to know.”
His face gets very still.
The scary kind of still.
But not scary at me.
Scary for someone else.
“Mama takes care of everybody,” I tell him. “But nobody really takes care of her but me.”
Mr. Moretti crouches down in front of me, even though his suit probably costs too much money to be that close to dirt.
I like that.
