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The flyer said as much. “There sure will be! Let’s get over there. I’m hungry, too.”
“Yay,” she squeaks as I turn back around. “I’m so, so, so excited!”
“Me, too, kiddo.” I get the car started and get us on the road.
Liv truly was right about me not boring Rae: the kid chats the entire way to the school because she has a lot to catch me up on. She’s been on Thanksgiving break this week, but the two weeks prior were full of new things she learned, information on a Christmas program the school will be putting on in December…and, of course, lots of heartache over the mess Liv and I ended up in.
I want to talk to her about all of that better than I did when I visited the other night.
I hold off until we’re alone at a table in the school cafeteria, which has been decorated nicely in fall colors.
Now that I can make eye-contact with her—and now that we’ve snagged cups of tea and plates of finger-foods—I say, “Rae, I want you to know how sorry I am that you’ve had to go through Annie’s fight with me. It’s not fair to you at all and I’m really sad about it.”
Her little face shows sadness, too, but only for a moment. “Well, you’re not fighting anymore.” She starts to take a bite of a snickerdoodle cookie, then pauses long enough to add, “I don’t think.”
“Not really,” I concede, “but…we’re not exactly the same as we were, either.”
She nods, eyebrows lifting in an incredibly adult,‘You think?’way.
I have to laugh.
“You and Annie used to laugh all the time,” she says.
“Yeah, I know.” I take my own bite of cookie and say around it, “Believe me, I miss it.”
Then I remember Liv talking with her mouth full of burger, and I have to try not to laugh more. Can’t be choking right now since a certain someone isn’t around to save me.
Rae is saying she misses our fun times, too, and that she is a million percent sure Annie does as well.
I almost do choke when she says, “I told her to call and tell you she loves you, but she wouldn’t do it.”
It’s hard as hell to swallow my food before I speak and even harder to speak calmly. “DoesAnnie love me?”
She shrugs her sparkly shoulders, now a bit more interested in a piece of raw broccoli than what her words are doing to me. “Wellll, you know how I told you that, um…” she tries to break the stalk off the broccoli, “…um….”
“Need some help?”
“Um, yes, please.” She hands me the broccoli, and I snap the stalk off as close to the top as I can. Then I hand her the part she wants and she immediately dips it in her small puddle of ranch. “Well, you know how I sneaked that phone call and told you she cares about you a whole, whole lot ‘cause that’s what she said and I wanted to tell you?”
“Yep.”
She takes a pretty hilarious-looking bite out of the broccoli, and I feel sure she’s going to end up with green specks in her teeth.
“Shealsosaid she was scared to talk to you because sometimes when you care about somebody a whole, whole lot like she cares about you, then sometimes that person doesn’t care a whole, whole lot back. And that made her scared. And I remembered one day at daycare, Krista Kay—she’s in the fourth grade—she said she didn’t want to go home because her big sister was really sad because she loved a boy and he didn’t love her back.” She pauses to eat another bite.
Entertained by her storytelling, I nod and say, “I see.”
She nods, too. “Yeah, so, but Krista Kay said her sister is mean. Maybe that’s why that boy doesn’t love her. But Annie isn’t mean and you’re not mean and we all havesomuch fun, so I think if she loves you, you’ll probably love her back, and she wouldn’t have to be scared to tell you!”
I chuckle. “That’s some smart thinking!”
“Yes! But Annie said it’s complicated.”
I’m sure Liv didn’t fill her in on why she’s so afraid of a relationship. “Ah, yeah. Itcanget complicated.”
“Well, I told her I want you to love each other so you can get married and we can all be happy forever.”
Her innocent sweetness and my affection for the two of them have me laughing heartily. I hold a palm up to her. “You rock, Rae. Slap me one.”
