AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That’s wonderful, Rose.” Hayley crouched down to the girl’s eye level. “Can you and I be friends too?”
Rose seriously deliberated for all of a second before giving Hayley a toothy, open-mouthed grin. “Yeah!” She shot out her arms, and Hayley scooped her up without thinking. “You can be my super-cool big-girl friend.”
“I would love that so much, Rose.”
“Rose, you want to show Hayley the pool?” Gavin asked.
“Yep!” said Rose. “Uncle Nick, I’m showin’ Hayley the pool and my friends and the special tree and Mommy’s bench, and then we’re gonna talk about big-girl stuff.”
“Okay!” Nick waved goodbye. “See you soon!”
Hayley shot a wide-eyed look at Nick as the elated ladies headed across the lawn, and soon she was kneeling by the pool with a bottle of bubbles, dipping the wand and holding it so Rose could blow.
“How many bubbles do you think we’ll get this time, honey?” she asked.
The little girl deliberated. “Three.”
“You sure? I think we can get more if we work together.”
Rose grinned, eyes wide. “Three hundred!”
Hayley gasped. “Wow! Are we going to fill the whole pool with bubbles?”
“Yeah!”
Asking the little girl to be her roommate was sounding like a perfectly reasonable idea by the time Mel Beckett walked up beside them.
“Did you make a new friend, Rose?” Mel asked.
“She’s my super-cool big-girl friend, Mommy!”
Hayley rose to her feet. “You’ve got a perfect little girl.”
“And she really likes you.” Mel hugged her. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too.”
There must have been something in her voice. Hayley had already noticed an intensity in Mel that seemed to infuse everything from her amber eyes to her bright red hair, and Hayley could tell that energy was currently focused on diagnosing what Mel had just heard.
Mel asked, “Everything okay?”
“Sure,” Hayley said. Then, as Mel waited, “Actually, not really.”
Mel squeezed her shoulder. “Talk later?”
“I’d really like that.”
Mel smiled and gave a decisive nod, and Hayley knew she would not be leaving the Becketts’ house without having a conversation.
31
Nick leaned back in his lawn chair and caught a glimpse of Hayley walking across the lawn. Her strides were loose and easy. She was gliding again.
Nick smiled.
“I keep meaning to tell you I’m pissed at you,” Gavin said.
Nick glanced at his friend in the chair next to him. “You can’t be all that pissed if you keep forgetting to tell me.”
