THAT SUMMER DAY IN Shakerag when Billie had run all the way home with Alice’s ghost breathing down her neck, she’d have double-dog dared you to tell her that she’d have a pink canopied bed in her own room in Highland Circle by fall. She’d have beat the snot out of you and called you a liar.
Now, here she was with Lucy, sitting cross-legged under the frilly canopy in a room a gazillion times bigger than her bedroom in the little blue house on Maple Street, talking about their new fifth-grade teacher and cutting out paper dolls from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue. Just an ordinary day. Two best friends playing together after school like they always did.
Laughter and mouth-watering smells drifted up from the kitchen. Cassie and Queen were downstairs cooking up a storm, with a whole lot of bossing around from Sudie and Merry Lynn and Aunt Fay Dean, it sounded like.
“What’s going on down there?” Lucy asked.
“Nothing special. They’re always like that.”
There was lots of laughter in Billie’s house in Highland Circle, and not a single willow switch in sight. She reckoned Queen liked it, too. She stayed in her pretty blue room here as much as she did in her house in Shakerag. She had plenty of blue pillows and a big fat recliner that she said helped her rheumatiz.
Queen had even been with Billie and Cassie to Mike’s farm, which had lots of stables. If Cassie would let her have a horse, she’d name him Trigger. She’d asked, but Cassie had just said, “We’ll see.”
Mike had winked at Billie behind Cassie’s back, which probably meant she’d have her own horse by Christmas. He talked a lot about Billie’s real daddy and said she should call him Granddaddy. Maybe she would someday. She liked the idea of having a granddaddy.
Things had changed a lot since that day at the courthouse. Billie still got her best information from listening at keyholes, but she reckoned Cassie had caught on. Now she was careful about what she said behind closed doors. Still, if Billie had to have a mama besides her own, she was glad it was Cassie, who would just as soon be in the little blue house with Queen teaching her how to make biscuits as downstairs in her own kitchen.
Billie and Cassie sat on the second-floor balcony a lot, and she talked about anything Billie wanted to. She liked to talk about Billie’s real mama and her real daddy, but in spite of everything, Saint was still the daddy of Billie’s heart. Someday that might change. She really hoped it did because it would make Cassie so happy.
Billie heard footsteps on the stairs, and it was Cassie, smiling as she walked into the room and asked if they wanted tea and cookies. Was she kidding? Little girls and cookies go together like gravy and biscuits.
They followed Cassie to the balcony. She didn’t serve her tea in a Mason jar with ice, which Billie personally preferred, but she always had plenty of homemade cookies. Sometimes she served little sandwiches she let Billie cut into hearts.
But the best part was that they were all there gathered around the table laughing and talking—Queen and Aunt Fay Dean and Sudie and Merry Lynn. When Cassie joined them, the circle was complete, all the women who were Billie’s true home. It felt like being on top of the world.
Billie hoped her mama and Joe were bending down to listen. She hoped they were smiling.
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