Free Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart Page A

wide, generous smile and the kind of brown hair that turned red in the summer. As she leaned toward me, she murmured, “Your brother worries about you. He just doesn’t know how to show it.”
    â€œSending over a strawberry cake is a fine start,” I said, giving her shoulder a squeeze.
    â€œYou know that was my idea.” Turning to Fleurette, she said, “Have you really been watching a picture get made all day?”
    Fleurette began a lively and elaborate report in which she not only managed to keep our meeting with Lucy Blake a secret, but invented an afternoon’s worth of activities to explain the length of our absence, including an actual derailed streetcar that forced a lengthy detour, an impromptu turn through the piano shop to hear a demonstration of new sheet music, and an encounter with a street vendor selling green African parrots from an enormous brass cage. The parrots spoke French, she said, and a little Dutch, but when asked their nationality would reply in a chorus, “We’re Spanish!” The man selling them could offer no explanation for that. He merely laughed and shrugged and offered Fleurette a good price if she would take two.
    The ease with which these small, meaningless lies unraveled from her tongue astonished me. Who taught her to fabricate such stories? I could hardly look at Norma while Fleurette spun those outlandish tales. For once Norma seemed not at all suspicious of the story being told to her, and Bessie was completely taken in by it, leaving us with a wave of her hand and shaking her head over the idea of parrots with French accents. It made me wonder how often I, too, had let Fleurette fool me.
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    ALL EVENING I tried to push Lucy out of my mind, but her predicament tugged at me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility that somewhere, at the center of this mess, that girl’s child was missing.
    Norma knocked at my bedroom door that night just as I was getting into bed. She sat on the edge of the mattress, one leg tucked under her and the other stretched out alongside me. She smelled of milk soap from her bath, and rice powder, and her hair was all wet curls, each one lifting individually as it dried in the warm night air.
    She had a way of pursing her lips when she had something serious to say. I knew better than to ask directly and just waited to hear what it was.
    â€œGreen African parrots?” she asked.
    â€œWhat about them?”
    â€œWhere did Fleurette get the story about the man selling green parrots on the street? You didn’t expect me to believe that, did you?”
    I had to smile. “No. I was surprised that you did.”
    â€œWell, I didn’t.” Norma looked down and smoothed the wrinkles out of the bedspread. “This has to do with Henry Kaufman, doesn’t it?”
    â€œWell—in a way, yes. It does.”
    â€œI can’t believe you would take Fleurette to see that man. We hardly let her out of the house for years, and now you’re parading her in front of a criminal. Why would you—”
    â€œBut it wasn’t Mr. Kaufman. It was a girl from the factory.”
    â€œWe don’t know any girls from factories.”
    â€œI saw her when I went to Mr. Kaufman’s office, and we ran into her on the sidewalk today. She . . . she thought I was in a different sort of trouble with him.”
    â€œDifferent sort of trouble?” she said, looking up and fixing those sharp eyes on me. “How many different sorts of trouble does Mr. Kaufman have to offer?”
    â€œThe girl, whose name is Lucy—”
    â€œDon’t tell me her name.”
    â€œI don’t have to tell you any of this.”
    â€œNo, tell me. What about her?”
    â€œShe had a baby.”
    â€œOh. And she asked for your expertise?” Norma raised an eyebrow at me.
    â€œNorma! The baby’s gone missing. Lucy thinks Mr. Kaufman had something to do with