Free Between Friends by Sandra Kitt

were geared toward treating family members fairly. No hitting below the belt. Unlike at home, no one in Valerie’s family judged her. Or expected perfection. In their chaotic house she could just be herself.
    That was not to say that fights didn’t break out. And there were reminders to Dallas that she was an interloper in Valerie’s family. Like when she was thirteen and Valerie’s sixteen-year-old brother, Tate, had cornered her in his bedroom and kissed her. Dallas remembered the alien invasion of his tongue in her mouth, swishing about like a snake and making her gag. She’d punched him in the stomach … and never told anyone about the incident. Dallas doubted if Tate ever had.
    She and Valerie got mad at each other from time to time and would break off their friendship. The incursions never lasted for more than an hour or two. And it was always Valerie who would have to come to apologize.
    “We used to have so much fun,” Valerie murmured in reminiscence, absently combing her fingers through her beautiful shoulder-length hair. She stretched out her legs and rested them on a corner of the coffee table. Opposite her, Dallas did the same. Their limbs almost touched, ankle to ankle, and simultaneously they caught each other’s gaze and smiled.
    “Do you know, when I was about eight I used to think that when you got older your skin would get lighter, like mine?” Valerie suddenly said.
    Dallas nearly gasped as she raised her brows. “For God’s sake, Val … you never told me that before. Why on earth did you think that?”
    Valerie shrugged. “I know it sounds stupid, but … I wanted you to be just like me.”
    Dallas slowly shook her head, still capable of being amazed at the observations of white folks. Even someone she loved as dearly as Valerie. “Why didn’t you think that as we got older your skin might get darker to match mine?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe because I always saw you as my sister. I wanted you to look like me.”
    “You know,” Dallas began thoughtfully, taking another sip of the wine. “Megan doesn’t have your fair coloring. She’s a beautiful little girl, but she doesn’t look like a Holland. Now how do you explain that?”
    Valerie didn’t answer right away. Her expression was a blank, as if she hadn’t considered that other people would have noticed the difference. And then there was a hint of embarrassment.
    “Megan looks like Megan,” she murmured evasively. “Maybe she favors the other side of her family.”
    Dallas pursed her lips and gently sloshed the wine around in her glass. She knew better than to pry. For close to twelve years Valerie had kept to herself the identity of her daughter’s natural father.
    “Does she ever ask about her father?”
    Valerie sighed. “All the time, now. It started about a year ago. She suddenly had all these questions I didn’t want to answer.”
    “You must have known that someday it would happen.”
    “Yeah, sort of.”
    “So, what do you tell her?”
    Valerie glanced covertly at Dallas and shifted positions. She drew both her legs up onto her chair with her arms closed around her knees. “Just that her father and I had a relationship that was short and didn’t work out.”
    “At least you didn’t tell her he was dead.”
    Valerie stared at her. “I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t true,” she said softly.
    There was a sadness to the admission that Dallas had never heard before. Even after she’d gotten pregnant and had the baby, Valerie had always exhibited a casual acceptance of her situation, as well as being impervious to the inevitable gossip and whispering about what she’d done, and the embarrassment to her family. There had been a total shutdown of any information that would give away the identity of the father.
    Dallas nodded, staring into her wineglass. Everyone had secrets. “I used to wonder who Megan’s father is, but only way back at the beginning, when you were first pregnant and she was a little baby.