Billie Standish Was Here Read Online Free Page B

didn’t doright by him. Not ever. I’m not proud, but it’s God’s own truth.” Her bottom lip was stretched to a thin white line.
    I couldn’t imagine how somebody as good as Miss Lydia could think she had done wrong by somebody as ornery as Curtis. But whatever she was remembering was about to make her cry, and I wasn’t about to ask anything that might knock a hole in that dam. So I did change the subject then.
    I stared at my bedroom ceiling that night thinking about how every single person on earth, no matter who they turned into later, started out as somebody’s baby.
    Everybody started out a blessing or a disappointment. A prayer that had been answered or nothing more than another mouth to feed. All by the time they’d drawn their first breath.
    I tried to imagine Miss Lydia with a little baby and had a hard time believing she wouldn’t do right by him. Didn’t she rock Curtis and sing lullabies and think he might grow up to be president? Didn’t she teach him nursery rhymes and ring-around-the-rosy?
    I could only imagine what might have made a fresh start in Cumberland seem like a good idea to Miss Lydia. Then, within three months, Curtis had brought shame and scandal down on her house. I wondered just how much fuel was in those looks of hers that could burndown a house. What a woman like Miss Lydia felt when her baby grew up to be a . . . a Curtis. And why she would blame herself.
    I didn’t know then. But I did start to see better why Miss Lydia was being so nice to me. Women like her always seem to need someone to mother. And it was pretty clear her first pass at it hadn’t turned out very well for anybody.
    Of course there was also the fact I was about as close to a motherless child as she was going to find.
    The next morning around eleven, I was home alone like usual when someone started banging on the back door. The way our house is situated, when you step out onto the back porch anybody at the door can see you at the same time you see them. That had never mattered to me until I went out and found Curtis Jenkins grinning in at me.
    I jumped back and hollered through the kitchen doorway, “What do you want?”
    He snorted. “Well, hello to you, too.”
    â€œHello, Curtis. What do you want?” I said.
    â€œCan I come in and use your phone?”
    Maybe it was because I had spent so much time the night before pondering why and when he’d turned out like he had, but my ears started ringing.
    â€œHow come you want to use our phone?” I asked him. Stall. Think. Clang clang clang.
    â€œOurs is out,” he grinned. “Guess all this rain has the lines down somewhere.”
    I said, “Sorry. Ours is out, too,” and I saw a tiny flicker of surprise in his eyes. He had been lying.
    His forearm was leaned against the door facing, and now he pushed off with it and took a step back. “Well, you don’t know how sorry I am to hear that,” he said and turned to go, ducking his head against the rain.
    Miss Lydia asked me three times that afternoon why I was so quiet, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. It wasn’t like anything had actually happened, and I figured she didn’t need to feel any worse toward Curtis. I decided to forget about it in my sleep that night and wake up happy.
    I could still do that then.

Chapter Three

    M   iss Lydia and I finished cleaning her knickknacks and storing them upstairs. It could have been done in three afternoons, but it took nine because she stopped to tell me the story behind each porcelain figure and engraved souvenir. Mr. Jenkins had worked for the railroad and traveled most of the time up until he retired and Miss Lydia had traveled with him a lot back in the early days of their marriage. It seemed like a lot, anyway, to somebody who had only been to Kansas City three times.
    They’d been to Denver and New York City and took a steamboat