Read My Dearest Friend for Free Online Page B

the warm days, such a yummy feeling, squishy mud and tickly wet grass against their feet!
    Carey Ann raced from her car to the door with Alexandra in her arms, both enclosed in squeaky yellow slickers. Carey Ann’s hips were so tiny Daphne couldn’t imagine how she had managed to carry a baby. Carey Ann seemed shy at first, but Alexandra didn’t; as soon as her mother released her from her arms, she began running through the house, grabbing hold of everything, and Carey Ann hurried along behind her, rescuing vases, straightening bedspreads, trying in vain to interest her daughter in a book she’d brought along. When Alexandra saw Dickens, who was asleep under the table in the kitchen, she shrieked with such delight that the dog sprang to his feet in terror.
    “Doddie!” the little girl yelled, and, racing over to him, she began to pummel his back with her little fists. Both she and the dog were about the same height. Dickens couldeasily have taken a bite of her, but he only looked up at Daphne with a disoriented and puzzled look.
    “Alexandra just loves dogs,” Carey Ann said, watching her daughter grab Dickens’s short black fur and pull. She sank into a kitchen chair, obviously grateful to have her baby’s attention captured for a moment so she could rest.
    Daphne watched her dog warily, not sure just how much he would put up with. He was a young dog, only five, and he had been around children before, but never around this kind of child, who was now trying to crawl on his back.
    “Good Dickens,” she said to him. He was standing very still as Alexandra mauled him.
    “Eye,” Alexandra said, poking her finger against Dickens’s eyelid. The dog blinked and turned his head away.
    “That’s right, Lexi!” Carey Ann said. “What a smart girl you are.”
    What an idiot
you
are!, Daphne thought, then chided herself. No, she had to give the woman more of a chance than this.
    She had brewed a pot of apple-cinnamon tea, knowing that often children wanted to drink what the adults drank, and since Carey Ann was already collapsed on a kitchen chair, Daphne picked up the tray and put it in the middle of the table. On a flowered plate were some cookies for the little girl, and crumbly pieces of applesauce cake for everyone. Daphne chatted easily about moving in, getting settled, and poured tea for herself and Carey Ann. In the meantime Alexandra had lost interest in the dog and clambered up on one of the wooden kitchen chairs to see what was going on at the table. Dickens, released, hurried off into Daphne’s bedroom. She could hear the clicking of his nails and the funny scooting noise he made as he crawled beneath her bed to hide.
    “Would you like tea?” Daphne asked Alexandra, smiling.
    “Me!”
the little girl yelled. She was standing on the chair, leaning over the table.
    “Is it all right if she has tea?” Daphne asked Carey Ann. “It’s apple cinnamon, but I’ve got plenty of milk if she wants it.”
    “Well …” Carey Ann said, drawing the word out as she tried to make up her mind.
    Daphne waited. Alexandra screamed,
“Me!”
A vision flew through Daphne’s mind as quickly as a bird; she saw herself stuffing a huge piece of applesauce cake into the little girl’s mouth.
    “I suppose it’s all right,” Carey Ann said.
    “Me!”
said Alexandra.
    “Yes, you may have some tea too,” Daphne told her, leaning over and picking up the bright pink flowered mug she had set out especially for Alexandra.
    “No—
me
!” Alexandra yelled, her face growing red.
    “I think she wants to pour her own tea,” Carey Ann said, smiling. “Alexandra’s such a big girl,” she said to her daughter in an adoring voice.
    Daphne put the teapot on the table within Alexandra’s reach. It wasn’t an expensive teapot or one rich with memories, but it was china, made in England, and it would break easily. It was so heavy Daphne didn’t know how the child was going to manage to pick it up. But she sat down at her