Page 40 of The Dating Charade

“Let me call your father,” her mom pleaded, gripping Star, who was now holding her phone up, videoing the whole affair.

“Girls, last call!” Cassie cried out across the hall. “Either you open up or I’m breaking in!”

Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

The door stared back in silence.

Summoning all six months of karate training as a child, Cassie ran like a wild boar and threw herself at the door. Just before slamming into it she kicked squarely at the center of the door with all she had.

The door rattled. Slightly. As if laughing at her pathetic attempt.

It was the second time tonight she’d been easily defeated.

She bounced back, stumbled, and crumpled on the floor.

“Sweetie!” Immediately her mother was beside her, while Star’s phone hovered over her head.

Star didn’t even try to mask her mile-wide smile. “Miss C? You okay?”

Cassie held onto an aching shoulder, groaning as she rolled over to her right side. “I’ve never felt my age before. You guys are making me feel my age.”

The door made a clicking noise, and two faces appeared cautiously in the two-inch crack.

“Deidre! Kennedy!” Cassie sprang up, pushing her hand through the open space before they could even think of closing it again. The door gave way, revealing faces covered in every Sharpie color in stock. Cassie snatched at the scissors so casually dangling from Kennedy’s hand.

“Well, well,” her mother said. “I misjudged you, dear. Looks like you got it open after all.”

After an hour of bubble baths, of scrubbing faces and arms, her mother gave each girl a hug and headed for her own home. Nobody else in the world would have noticed just how eager she was to get into her nice, peaceful car after such an arduous evening. But after apologizing to Cassie for the fiftieth time and then highlighting each of the wonderful character traits she had witnessed in the girls, she quickly slipped into her driver’s seat and backed out without even looking twice each way. Cassie watched. She understood. There had been more excitement in these three hours than her mother normally had in a month.

With Star’s shower running down the hall, Cassie sat with Deidre on Star’s bed. Kennedy lay beside them on her tummy, turning the pages of the big red dog book, their new favorite series. The room smelled thickly of lavender from the girls’ baths, but there was also a mildly sour smell Cassie couldn’t put her finger on. Minus all the deadly office supplies, the room had been put back in order. The desk sat crammed against the window, and two mismatching antique bedside tables from Cassie’s great grandmother had been placed on either side of the queen-sized mattress. The closet was newly crammed with twenty shades of pink. Tags still hung on most items.

Cassie peeked an eye over at Kennedy’s page—hoping for no more grand ideas like calling the fire department—while she cautiously began to rub a piece of Deidre’s coiling black hair. Like most things these days, Cassie was clueless as to what she was doing.

Her phone sat beside her, open to a blog article on African American hairstyles for little girls. She fumbled with reopening the coconut oil lid with her now oiled hands and looked at the array of bows and large colorful beads that lay across the quilt in front of her. “Did you pick out your favorite bows yet?” She hoped desperately Deidre didn’t choose one of the mysterious beads—another blog post tutorial entirely.

Deidre had been playing with the hem of her Disney-themed pajamas, remarkably patient for being a girl of only six. Silently, she handed over a red bow and a green one.

“Oh, I like that. It’s very festive.” Cassie’s eyes shifted to the Rudolf sweater and matching green corduroys on the hanger for Deidre to wear to school tomorrow.

Deidre picked up a polka-dotted white-and-black bow and handed it to her. Then an orange one.

“All of these?” Cassie asked.

Deidre turned her back to Cassie, hands once more in the pile of bows.

“Well, now that’s a nice arrangement you have there. I wouldn’t have thought to put the orange and green and red and polka-dotted—” Cassie watched Deidre add a purple one to her growing bouquet. “—and purple. Pretty soon you’ll have all the colors of the rainbow.”

Kennedy shut the book and rolled over to the bedside table. She opened it and wedged the book inside.

Cassie’s mouth fell open.

The sour smell was coming from the drawer—the distinct smell of rotting food.

In a blink of an eye, Cassie was jolted back to the reminder of where these kids had come from. In a room thick with lavender, a house of bubble baths and cozy comforters, food for today and someone to tuck them in at night, there were still the small, intruding reminders that everything was not fine. Reminders that shattered her romantic ideals and forced her to keep a spry eye out for pocket-sized clues.

It amazed her that these girls could laugh so loudly, embrace life so merrily twenty-three hours of the day and yet also know fear and hardship in ways she could only imagine.

Struggling for nonchalance, Cassie set the coconut oil down and picked up the detangling spray and comb. “What’s going on in that book, Kennedy? How did that doggie end up in the swimming pool?”