Slice Of Cherry Read Free Page B

Kit that she’d seen Daddy, even if only for a second, but decided against it. Kit would only get upset, and if she got too upset, she might take it out on Franken. “I’ll figure out how to open a fairy door one day. And just cuz something’s a fairy tale doesn’t mean it’s not true.” Fancy cleared away the extra setting. “And Franken won’t be ‘real-life’ much longer. Not if you don’t stop cutting him so much. At least give him time to heal. He’ll get infected otherwise.”
    “I
should
be more careful with him. Do you know what he said yesterday?” Kit emptied the bacon and eggs onto a serving dish, her eyes dreamy and faraway. “He said, ‘The cellar is brighter with you here. You radiate light.’” She held the metal serving spoon to her face and smiled at her reflection. “‘You radiate light.’ Isn’t that pretty?”
    “Gorgeous.” Fancy bumped Kit with her hip as she passed by to set the eggs and bacon on the table. “But he’d say anything to get you to stop cutting on him.”
    Kit gripped the spoon to her chest and swooned against the counter. “You don’t mean to say you think he was lying?”
    “Yup.”
    Kit unswooned and glared at her sister. “You know, you could at least humor me, for Christ’s sake.”
    “Boys always lie.” Fancy shrugged. “The sooner you face that, the better.”
    “How would you know?” Kit threw the spoon at her, but Fancy, used to Kit’s moods, caught it without even looking and set it gently on the table.
    “Yeah, Fancy, how
would
you know?”
    The sisters jumped as Madda kicked the back door shut behind her, her arms full of groceries from Alcide’s Cajun Market. She was wearing her black work Dickies with her name, Lynne, stitched over her bosom. She looked sweaty and tired and happy to be home.
    Fancy felt the same grateful thrill to see her mother that she always felt, as though Madda had somehow been tricked into caring for them and any minute would realize the truth and flee. However, there was no mistaking the sisters’ maternity; Madda shared their looks: the whisky eyes and ballerina necks, the Cadbury-smooth skin and rolling gait that made a dance of every step. Once Madda’s hair had been swingingly long like Fancy’s, but working all night at the factory had robbed her of the time and energy needed to maintain suchvanities, and so she’d shaved her head. That was Madda’s way: When something became inconvenient, she scrapped it.
    “Y’all got any boyfriends I don’t know about?” she asked, grinning.
    “Puke,” said Fancy as she dropped into her chair at the table. “Not me,” said Kit, when Madda looked at her. “To my eternal shame.” She took one of the grocery bags and helped put the food away.
    “It’s not shameful,” Fancy exclaimed, watching them work. “Virgins automatically go to heaven.”
    “Heaven schmeaven. I don’t wanna get saved that bad.”
    Madda smacked the back of Kit’s head on the way to the bread box. “Don’t talk like that. And if you want a boyfriend, go out there and get one. How you expect to meet anybody if you never leave the house?”
    Since it was Friday, Madda gave the sisters their allowance— a generous one since they took care of the house and did most of the cooking and all the chores. It paid not to inconvenience Madda.
    When Kit squeezed into Fancy’s chair, butting her with her sharp hip bones, Fancy gave Kit her share of their allowance for safekeeping.
    Kit fanned the money. “You keep paying us like this,” she said as Madda joined them at the table, “we gone fly away in a private jet, and you won’t ever see us again.”
    “Everybody flies the coop sometime. Kit, sit in your own chair.”
    When they were settled properly around the table, Madda said, “I’m fixing to be dead to the world in a short while, so I wanna remind y’all to get new dresses. Especially you,” she added, shooing Fancy away from her plate. “I swear there ain’t one thing in