From Humbug To Holiday Bride. Zena Valentine

I don’t think so. Kittens weren’t my thing. Never cared for the little buggers,” she said.

      “Never cared for a kitten!” Emma made a face to share her horror with Annie, whose blue eyes reflected concern as she, too, shook her head slowly. They were clearly in deep sympathy with her problem.

      As B.J. rolled her eyes, she caught Mrs. Billings’s chuckle and felt for a moment as if she had been dropped into another world. Little girls liked juvenile hard rock and dressing Barbie dolls. Kittens were surely passé. Why weren’t they experimenting with makeup or watching television or stealing coins off the dresser like normal kids did? B.J. wondered. “I’ll have lemonade,” she said to Mrs. Billings.

      “It’s really sour,” Emma warned, scrunching up her face.

      “So am I. We’ll get along fine,” she said, watching Hamish come through the door with her suitcases.

      “These are Brenda’s things,” he announced.

      “Damn it, I’m B.J.”

      “Don’t swear in front of the children,” he said softly, leaning toward her.

      “Sorry. I’m not Brenda. I’ve never been Brenda. It’s the name of some soap opera person my mother liked before I was born,” she muttered.

      “It’s a nice name, very feminine. Like you. Sometimes,” he said, and then added, “Brenda Jane.”

      She rolled her eyes. “Dear Lord, help me, she sighed without reverence, then she heard his soft laugh.

      “Catching on already?” he quipped.

      Annie crawled up on a chair, folded her arms on the edge of the table, rested her chin in the middle of them and silently stared at her. Emma flitted around the room chattering about first grade, which she had just started, about riding the school bus like the big kids, about playing Chinese checkers and hating pineapple because it stung her mouth. She showed B.J. her loose tooth and said she didn’t have to change clothes after school today because B.J. was coming to stay and so it was okay to leave her good clothes on.

      “My daddy’s going to sleep in his office,” she announced, skipping on one foot, holding the toes of the other one behind her.

      “Is that all you do is talk?” B.J. asked. “You never stop talking.”

      “Pretty much. Mrs. Billings calls me a chatterbox. Daddy said once I said my first word I never shut up.” Her high-pitched laughter sailed around the room. “That’s silly, ‘cause I don’t talk when I sleep, or in church. Or when I’m supposed to be quiet in school.”

      “Why do you talk so much?” B.J. asked,’mesmerized by this miniature version of the reverend, with all his joy and open laughter bubbling out of her like soapsuds.

      “There’s lots to say,” she said, hopping in a circle. “I bet you can’t do this.”