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“Good!” Angela said in return.
“Do you want to go with us to get her pajamas?” Pris asked, taking charge.
“Can we?”
“Of course,” Katrina said, taking Pris’s hand so she could stand up. “Goodbye, Daddy. I’m taking your girls away with me for a while. Will you survive?”
“I have those boys in there,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to game with them.”
Angela went back to her room to get Penelope, and the four of them left for Katrina’s room over Café Delphine.
“Angela, I talked to your dad about staying home tomorrow so you can do your project. He really needs a day on dry land, so he was good with it.”
“Oh, good, thank you.”
“Actually, it was his idea first. I need to be careful not to reword things to fit my agenda. I have to do it at my job all the time, and it’s too easy to slip in my personal life.”
“Gotcha. I do the same thing,” Angela said. “Without even realizing it, I manipulate to get what I want.”
Katrina put up her hand and they high-fived, laughing. “Especially with family. It’s okay when you know someone so well that you can approach them in a certain way to get what you want as long as you’re honest about it.”
Pulling up in front of the dark café in her Porsche, Katrina pointed. “Come on, girls, you get to see how I have to live until the carpenter completes the work on my house.”
“You should just move in with us,” Angela said without hesitation.
“You’re very sweet. But I’m not sure that would be a good thing. Your mom is there in the morning, and it feels disrespectful for me to be sleeping in her bed.”
Cringing, she didn’t mean for it to sound so scandalous, and she looked at Pris to see what her response was. Then, perfect timing, they heard laughter as Alphé’s ex, Angela and Pris’s mother, Lola, and her boyfriend, Alfonso Casson, were getting out of their car to return to his apartment above the hardware store he owned.
The three women, with Pris holding on to Katrina’s hand, stood in front of the café and watched the couple obviously having enjoyed a Saturday evening out together.
“I rest my case,” Angela said. “Talk about disrespect.”
“Yeah, but that’s on her,” Katrina said. “I want you kids to see the other side of it, how people live who honor themselves as well as their loved ones. Really, it boils down to self-respect.”
“I hope you’re going to marry my dad,” Pris said decisively, and Angela concurred.
“I want that, too,” she said.
“Alphé and I have to know each other longer than a month,” Katrina said, unlocking the door.
They followed her up the narrow staircase. At the top of the stairs was another door, the entrance to the room she rented.
“This is nice. I didn’t know there were rooms up here,” Penelope said, looking around.
“It’s really the only place to stay in town unless you go out past the roadhouse and stay at that hotel.”
She got her overnight bag and a change of clothes and made haste to get back to Alphé.
Back down on the street, they saw lights on in the apartment above the hardware store and silhouettes moving around behind the shades.
“She chose that over us,” Angela said. “I’ll never forgive her for it.”
“Yes, you will,” Katrina replied. “Your mom is just a human being. We have so many expectations for women, and we can never wholly live up to them.”
“Katrina, she lied to my dad, and then when she didn’t get her way because he had to work so much, she hooked up with that old man. I’m not sure how not having expectations would change that.”
“Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just making excuses for her, hoping it will make you girls feel better.”
