Dandelion Summer by Lisa Wingate

were killing me,” she remarked of the sandals.
    I frowned at them. “We do have a shoe closet.” I pointed toward the door next to her. “Conveniently within reach.”
    Shrugging, she opened the door and kicked her shoes in, then slipped her backpack off her shoulder and pulled something from it. She held it up as if she felt I would have an interest. “Hey, J. Norm, look what I got today.” She lifted it near my face.
    I squinted at the box. Unsalted butter, by the look of it. A full pound. Unopened. My mouth watered. I couldn’t recall my last taste of real butter—sometime before Annalee put me on a low-fat and low-cholesterol diet two years ago, following my close call with a heart attack and subsequent surgery.
    “Butter?” I surmised.
    The girl’s face lifted into a grin. “Yeah, I jacked it from the consumer science room at school. Mrs. Lora always said nothin’ cooked without real cow butter tastes right, and Mrs. Lora could cook.”
    “ Stolen butter,” I corrected.
    She snorted and rolled her eyes, I suppose to indicate that I was ruining her surprise.
    “Yum,” I said blandly, and she smirked at me, then started for the kitchen.
    “Don’t fall down the dumb stairs and get me in trouble.”
    “I will endeavor not to.”
    She stopped then, and flashed a glance over her shoulder, her lips pursed. “What’re you doin’ up there, anyhow?” Her gaze drifted toward the stairs, curiosity brewing in her odd gray-green eyes. This was the first time she’d shown an interest in my comings and goings, other than to warn me not to cause her to be fired, because she had a use for the money.
    “Work,” I answered, and I noted that she had on even more makeup than usual. “So much makeup is unbecoming on a young lady. My wife never allowed Deborah to wear more than a bit of lipstick when she was in school.”
    Momentarily, I thought I’d succeeded in offending the girl, or perhaps in making a point, but she only bobbed her head side to side with a slight shrug of her shoulders. “Well, you ain’t my mama, and besides, you ain’t so shiny, neither.”
    “ Aren’t . . . either ,” I corrected, and she gave a slow, deliberate blink.
    “If the fashion police come by here, they’re gonna haul you off first.” She motioned to my attire, and I was reminded that I still had on this morning’s pajama pants and slippers. Halfway through dressing, I’d had a thought about the young woman who had lived above the garage and served as a mother’s helper in the house when I was quite young. She was a cousin of some sort, as I recalled. She had an older sister who had lived with us briefly, too. I’d adored Frances, and now I remembered that she’d left my mother’s employ abruptly. I couldn’t recall why. Frances . . . Frances . . . something. It occurred to me that if I could unearth my mother’s photo albums, Frances’s full name might be written there. No telling whether she would still be alive today—Frances must have been eight or ten years older than myself. I’d had no luck finding Mother’s photo albums in the closets. I had finally concluded that they must have been packed and moved to the attic when my mother passed. The albums would not be easy to find. There was no rhyme or reason to the tangle of items stored in the attic—ours, my parents’, perhaps even things that had been in the house when my parents had purchased it.
    Deborah had come and gone this noon and not even noticed my combination of a worsted button-down shirt and blue pajama bottoms. Perhaps she thought I’d done it to goad her, and so she’d ignored it intentionally.
    “I fear they’ll arrest both of us. The fashion police,” I remarked, and started up the stairs. I had the urge to turn and look at the girl again. When I did, she was shaking her head and smiling. It seemed a long time since I’d made someone smile.
    “Mind the fort,” I told her. “Keep the front door locked and chained. If Deborah drops