Casey laughed. She looked like her uncle and she had his sense of humor. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” Emmie said.
“Then come inside and I’ll make you some breakfast.”
Inside, Emmie peered around the kitchen. “Did you really put jam in those jars?”
“I did.” Casey was looking in the refrigerator, trying to decide what to cook for this child, who she’d heard was a picky eater.
“I saw the jars when Uncle Tate chased the peacock. He hates that bird! Mom let me buy him a big mug with a peacock handle. It’ll make him laugh.”
“Has he seen it yet?”
“No,” Emmie said. “What’s that?”
“Pie dough. I made it yesterday. You wouldn’t like to help me make some tiny pies, would you? We can fill them with bacon and cheese, or blackberries, or we can make up a filling. Pizza is nice, or I have some South Carolina peaches we can use.”
With every word Casey spoke, Emmie’s eyes grew bigger. It took a few minutes to get hands washed, aprons on, and hair tied back before they were ready to begin. Casey showed her how to use the round biscuit cutter to shape the dough and how to put the filling in the middle.
Throughout it all, Emmie kept up a steady stream of talk about everything. Her mother was asleep, Uncle Tate was reading, and Uncle Jack had left the house early that morning. “It was still dark,” Emmie said. She said she’d thought about climbing into bed with her mother, but instead she got dressed and went in search of the “food lady.”
She and her mother had arrived late the afternoon before. “I wanted to come see you then, but Uncle Tate said no, that you were busy. Do you cook a lot?”
“Lately, I’ve cooked too much,” Casey said. She was putting the first batch of the little pies in the oven. “I thought I’d make a big breakfast and take it over there. When do you think your mother wi
ll be awake?”
“Not for a long time.” Emmie sighed. “Mom and Uncle Tate talked all night. I went down once and Mom was crying.”
“I’m sorry,” Casey whispered, and truly hoped she wasn’t the cause of Nina’s tears. “Do you know why she was crying?”
“My dad,” Emmie said. “It’s always him. She’s unhappy when he’s around. Can I use this turtle cutter?”
“I think that’s a perfect shape. Want to dye the peaches green?”
“Pink!” Emmie said.
“Good choice.” Casey got out her food colorings. She knew she probably shouldn’t ask a child, but her mind was so full of what she’d read. How had this lovely child dealt with all that had happened? “When your dad lived with you and your mom, was he gone a lot?”
“Yes, but my mom and I liked it better when he wasn’t there.” Under Casey’s direction, Emmie put a few drops of red coloring on the peaches and turned them pink. “Dad drank whiskey and yelled at us, and that made Mom cry. Uncle Tate was working on movies so we didn’t see him except on the computer. Mom said that when he called us we had to lie and say we were really happy. She didn’t want Uncle Tate to be sad.”
“That must have been difficult.” Casey helped Emmie press the edges of the dough together.
“Yeah. It was hard not to tell him the truth. Mom had to put me in another school because Dad wouldn’t pay the bill. He said I had to go to school with regular kids, but they weren’t nice to me, because my uncle is a movie star. But I couldn’t tell Uncle Tate that.”
“What happened when your uncle came home?”
Smiling, Emmie used a truffle cutter to make a tiny diamond in the turtle’s back. “Uncle Tate went crazy. He was really, really mad. He broke some dishes.”
Casey looked up, alarmed. “Were you afraid of him?”
“Naw. It was exciting. Uncle Tate said he was going to murder my dad, but Mom said he couldn’t because of the police. He went to my old school and smiled at all the ladies and they let me back in. Uncle Tate is really good at smiling. But my mom said it isn’t Uncle Tate’s face that makes him a hero, it’s that he knows how to pay bills.”
Casey laughed. She already liked Nina. “What happened after that?”
“Dad quit being on TV. He said he was glad, because he hated the show. Then he went to a real have.”
Casey remembered what she’d read. “Right. Rehab. Did it work? Did he quit drinking?”