“I just told you.” She lowered her hand and dropped to her heels.
“Why don’t you tell me again, but this time keep your breasts out of the conversation.”
A wrinkle appeared between her brows. “My what? What are you talking about?”
She looked so genuinely perplexed, John almost believed her innocent expression. Almost. “If you want to talk to me, don’t use your body to do it. Unless, of course, you want me to take you up on your offer.”
She shook her head, disgusted. “You’re a sick man, John Kowalsky. If you can manage to keep your eyeballs off the front of my dress, and your mind out of the gutter, we have something more important to discuss than your absurd fantasies.”
John rocked back on his heels and looked down into her face. He wasn’t sick. At least he didn’t think so. He wasn’t as sick as some of the guys he knew.
Georgeanne tilted her head to the side. “I want you to remember your promise.”
“What promise?”
“Not to tell Lexie you’re her father. She should hear it from me.”
“Fine,” he said, and reached for his sunglasses on the bridge of his nose. He shoved a side piece down the front pocket of his jeans, leaving the glasses to hang by his hip. “And I want you to remember that Lexie and I are going to get to know each other. Alone. I’m taking her to fly her kite, and don’t you follow us in ten minutes.”
She thought for a moment, then said, “Lexie’s too shy. She’ll need me.”
John seriously doubted there was a shy bone in Lexie’s body. “Don’t bullshit me, Georgie.”
Her green eyes narrowed. “Just don’t go where I can’t see you.”
“What do you think I’m going to do, kidnap her?”
“No,” she said, but John knew she didn’t trust him any more than he trusted her. He had a feeling that was exactly what she thought.
“We won’t go too far.” He turned back toward the others. He’d told Hugh about Georgeanne and Lexie, and he knew he could count on his friend’s discretion. “Are you ready, Lexie?” he asked.
“Yep.” She stood with her pink kite in hand, and together the two of them headed away from people throwing Frisbees, toward a nice grassy expanse. After Lexie got her feet tangled in the kite’s tail the second time, John took it from her. The top of her head barely reached his waist, and he felt huge walking next to her. Again he didn’t know what to say and did very little talking. But then, he didn’t need to.
“Last year, when I was a little kid, I was in kindergarten,” his daughter began, then she proceeded to name each child in her class, relate whether they owned a pet, and describe the breed.
“And he gots three dogs.” She held up three fingers. “That’s just not fair.”
John looked over his shoulder, determined that they’d walked a couple of hundred feet, and stopped. “I think this is a good spot.”
“Do you gots any dogs?”
“No. No dogs.” He handed her back the spool of string with the stick through the center.
She shook her head sadly. “Me neither, but I want a dalmatian,” she said as she grasped each side of the stick. “A great big one with lots of spots.”
“Keep the string tight.” He held the pink kite above his head and felt the gentle pull of the breeze.
“Don’t I have to run?”
“Not today.” He moved the kite to the left and the wind tugged harder. “Now walk backward, but don’t let out any string until I tell you.” She nodded and looked so serious he almost laughed.
After ten tries, the kite rose about twenty feet in the air. “Help me.” She panicked, her face turned skyward. “It’s gonna fall again.”
“Not this time,” he assured her as he came to stand next to her. “And if it does, we’ll put it back up.”
She shook her head and her denim hat fell on the ground. “It’s gonna fall, I just know it. You take it!” She shoved the spool toward him.
John lowered himself to one knee beside her. “You can do it,” he said, and when she leaned her back against his chest, he felt his heart stop for a few beats. “Just let the string out slowly.” John stared into her face as she watched her kite soar higher. Her expression turned quickly from trepidation to delight.
“I did it,” she whispered, and turned to look over her shoulder at him.
Her soft breath brushed his cheek and swept deep down to his soul. A moment before, his heart had felt as if it had stopped; now it swelled. It felt as if a balloon were being inflated beneath his sternum. It grew big and fast and intense, and he had to look away. He looked at the people flying kites around him. He looked at fathers and mothers and children. Families. He was a daddy again. But for how long this time? his cynical subconscious asked.
“I did it, Mr. Wall.” She spoke quietly, as if a raised voice would bring her kite crashing to the ground.
He looked back at his child. “My name is John.”
“I did it, John.”
“Yes, you did.”
She smiled. “I like you.”
“I like you, Lexie.”
She looked up at her kite. “Do you gots kids?”
Her question took him by surprise, and he waited a moment before answering, “Yes.” He wasn’t going to lie to her, but she wasn’t ready for the truth, and of course, he’d promised Georgeanne. “I had a little boy, but he died when he was a baby.”
“How?”
John glanced up at the kite. “Let out a little more string.” When Lexie did as he advised he said, “He was born too early.”
“Oh, what time?”
“What?” He looked into the small face so close to his.
“What time was he born?”
“About four o’clock in the morning.”
She nodded as if that answered everything. “Yep, too early. All the doctors are still asleep. I was born late.”
John smiled, impressed with her logic. She was obviously quite bright.
“What was his name?”
“Toby.” And he was your big brother.
“That’s a weird name.”
“I like it,” he said, feeling himself relax a bit for the first time since he’d driven into the park.
Lexie shrugged. “I want to have a baby, but my mommy says no.”
John carefully settled her more comfortably against his chest, and everything seemed to slip into place, like a smooth one-timer: slide, hit, score. He placed his hands on each side of the stick next to hers and relaxed a bit more. His chin touched her soft temple when he said, “Good, you’re too young to have a baby.”
Lexie giggled and shook her head. “Not me! My mom. I want my mom to have a baby.”
“And she said no, huh?”
“Yep, ‘cause she don’t got no husband, but she could get one if she just tried harder.”
“A husband?”
“Yep, and then she could have a baby, too. My mom said she went to the garden and pulled me up like a carrot, but that’s not true. Babies don’t come from a garden.”
“Where do they come from?”
She bumped his chin as she looked up at him. “Don’t you know?”
He’d known for a very long time. “Why don’t you tell me.”
She shrugged and returned her gaze to the kite. “Well, a man and a woman gets married, and then they go home and lie on the bed. They close their eyes really, really tight and think really, really hard. Then a baby goes into the mommy’s tummy.”
John laughed, he couldn’t help it. “Does your mom know that you think babies are conceived through telepathy?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” He’d heard or read somewhere that parents should talk to their children about sex at an early age. “Maybe you better tell your mom that you know babies aren’t grown in a garden.”
She thought for a few moments before she said, “No. My mommy likes to tell that story at night sometimes. But I did tell her that I’m too big to believe in the Easter Bunny.”