“Good point.”
“He’s wondering if I’m around for lunch. He says he’s bringing a friend he wants me to meet. Do you want to come? Maybe the friend is single.”
“How can I join you? Liz isn’t here. Are you suggesting we close the store?”
“Oh yeah.” Nina laughed. “Who knew you would turn out to be so responsible?”
“Not me.” Polly walked away. “I think it’s your terrible influence. I used to be carefree and disorganized, and you’ve ruined me. The other day I was able to put my hand directly on something I was looking for. It threw me off for the rest of the day.”
“Sorry,” said Nina.
“You should be,” Polly replied, heading into the office to grab some paperwork.
Archie’s friend was nothing like Nina had expected. She was only four feet tall, for a start.
“This is Millie,” said Archie. “She’s your sister.” He paused. “Mine, too.”
Millie wasn’t a redhead, but there was still something familiar about her. She looked more like her mom, Eliza, the woman who had attempted to stop Lydia’s tirade the other day, but there was still plenty of her dad in her bone structure.
She stuck out her hand. “Hi, Nina. It’s nice to meet you.”
Nina shook her hand. What a formal child. “I didn’t realize you two hung out,” she said.
The three of them found a table at the back of the restaurant, and Vanessa came over to take their order.
“More family?” she asked. She looked at Millie. “Do you want a kids’ menu?”
Millie looked up at her, thoughtfully. “Is there coloring on it?”
“Yes, and a word search.”
“Well then, yes, please.” She looked at Nina. “I love a word search.”
“Who doesn’t?” said Nina. “And Mad Libs.”
“Yeah!” said Millie, clearly tickled to have found a kindred spirit. Word geeks love to discover one another. Come upon. Identify. Recognize. Etc.
Archie cleared his throat. “Actually, we don’t usually hang out. Eliza reached out to me after the meeting at the lawyer’s a couple of weeks ago, and we decided it might be fun.” He looked at Millie and then back at Nina. “I brought her to lunch because I can’t talk about books anymore. I’m exhausted. I thought you could take over.”
Millie smiled at him and patted his hand. “It’s OK, you knew quite a lot about Harry Potter.”
“And if you’d read The Hunger Games, I would have been able to talk about that, too.” He grinned. “But your mother is a sensible woman.”
Nina said, “The Hunger Games is great, but maybe a little bloody for a . . .”
“Ten-year-old,” said Millie. She took a sip of the lemonade Vanessa had delivered. “But I wanted to talk to you about Daddy, anyway.”
Nina’s smile faded a little. “You know I never met him, right? I didn’t know him at all.”
Millie frowned. “You didn’t?”
Nina looked at Archie, who shrugged. “No one even knew I was alive before your dad died. He was never my dad, really.”
Millie was silent, processing this. “He wasn’t married to your mom at all?”
Nina shook her head. “You know the other families, though?”
Millie turned the lemonade glass around slowly on the table. “A bit. I’ve met Archie before, at the holidays, but I wasn’t paying all that much attention, honestly.” She looked up at Nina, her eyes clear. “I mean, I’m a kid; it was Christmas.”
“I came to see you in the hospital when you were born,” said Archie.
Millie smiled. “You did?”
Archie nodded. “I was a teenager, so I was pretending to be really cool about it, but you were deeply ugly as a baby.”
Millie giggled.
“Your mom kept asking if I wanted to hold you, and I kept saying no. I was worried you would suddenly attack.”
Millie giggled harder, then stopped. “I miss my dad,” she said.
Nina nodded. “I bet you do. What was he like?”
Millie smiled. “He was amazing. He played with me all the time. He was pretty old, but he came up with the best games. He watched my favorite shows with me, that kind of thing. We would read together every single day. He sat with me at night when I went to sleep, because sometimes I get scared of the dark.” She looked at Nina quickly but found no judgment there. “And sometimes he would set up my toys in funny ways. Long lines of Littlest Pet Shop animals marching across the floor, dinosaurs dressed in Barbie clothes, you know? That kind of thing.”
Nina smiled. “That must have taken some effort.”
“Yeah, dinosaurs have shorter arms than Barbie.”
“Everyone has shorter arms than Barbie.”
Millie nodded. “He rolled up the sleeves. My mom works a lot, but he was kind of retired, so he picked me up from school. Now my babysitter does it. She’s OK.” A little lemonade had spilled on the table, and she drew a starfish. “It’s been over a month now, but I’m always sad to see her car.”
Nina wasn’t sure what to say. She was surprised by Millie’s description of her dad. Their dad. For the first time, she wished she’d met him and impulsively reached across the table and squeezed Millie’s hand.
“He sounds great. I’m really sorry I didn’t know him.”
Millie looked up, her eyes shiny. “Yeah, you would have liked him, I expect.” She took a breath. “Lots of people did. He was my best friend, outside of school.”
“Who’s your best friend in school?” Nina was curious.
“Oh, you know, it changes.” Millie looked at the table. There was a sudden stillness to her shoulders, and Nina looked at Archie.
“Do you like school?”
Millie shook her head, and suddenly burst out, “Not really. I have friends, sometimes, but most of the time no one talks to me. Which is fine, honestly, because I’m happy on my own; it’s totally fine. Really fine. And no one wants to talk about books, except sometimes Harry Potter because they’ve read it, but honestly, I don’t know if they really read properly because they don’t know anything, and if I say, well, what about The Candymakers, or Calpurnia Tate, or Penderwicks, and they’re like, what’s that, then I feel bad.” She subsided.
“Bad for them because they haven’t read those books, which, by the way, are all awesome, awesome books? I love all of those.” Nina felt herself relaxing further; this was her favorite topic. She wished she didn’t feel so much identification with Millie, though; it was giving her flashbacks to her own school years. Recess and lunch, finding a spot to be alone, and then half wishing someone would find you.
“Bad that I can’t think of anything to say if it isn’t about books.” Millie looked crestfallen. “They want to talk about Pokémon or whatever, and I like Pokémon, but I don’t know all about them like I do about books.” She looked at Nina somewhat pleadingly. “It’s hard to find stuff to talk about sometimes. It gives me a tummy ache.”
“Well, we can talk about books whenever you like,” Nina said. “Do you think your mom would let you join a book club at the store? I have a whole group of girls your age who love all those books and lots more.” She remembered that Millie and Eliza lived in Malibu. “It’s a long way to come.”