Free Ship of Dolls by Shirley Parenteau

chuckled. “You can have all the chocolate ice cream you want. And after that, I have a friend I want you to meet. She may have a surprise for you.”
    He paused at the door, reminding her as he sometimes did of her papa. It was in the way he smiled with a sparkle in his eyes that spread over his face. “Things will look better tomorrow. That’s another promise. Good night, honey.”
    “Good night,” she answered softly. While his steps faded on the stairs, she sat with Annie and tried to think through everything that had happened. She had made a mistake to keep the truth to herself for so long. She would tell Grandma she realized that and was sorry she hadn’t explained sooner. Part of her rebelled at the thought of apologizing. Grandma said Mama hadn’t grown up right. She saw things she didn’t like about Mama when she looked at Lexie.
    “That’s not fair,” Lexie whispered to Annie. “She doesn’t give me a chance to be me.” But then she remembered Grandpa talking about it being hard to raise a girl, especially when you loved her. They didn’t know her very well. When they did, they would learn that she made good decisions. Most of the time.
    A sigh almost as heavy as Grandma’s made its way through her, and she decided not to worry about it anymore tonight. After changing into her nightgown, she pulled Annie close again. “I’ve never been inside the ice-​cream parlor,” she told the doll. “But I looked through the window one day. It has round tables, and when the door opened, I could smell sweet syrups.”
    Maybe she wouldn’t start walking to California just yet. At least not until after the ice cream and Grandpa’s surprise. And more questions about that letter she’d seen Grandma push into her apron pocket.

W hen Lexie stepped into the ice-​cream parlor with Grandpa on Monday, every surface gleamed, inviting customers with chocolate-​ and strawberry-​colored paint. It was a magical place that made her mouth water with anticipation.
    Grandma had made oatmeal that morning with brown sugar on top with the milk. Lexie knew it was a way of saying she was sorry about last night. Sometimes, words were hard for Grandma, the way they were for her.
    Feeling a need to say she was sorry right back, Lexie had hugged her before running to school. Grandma had hugged her, too, and later, Lexie found a freshly baked oatmeal cookie in her lunch box.
    Now Grandpa swept out a chair with a round seat and a heart-​shaped back and waved her onto it. Each table held a Christmassy red candle standing upright in an ice-​cream sundae dish, with little gold balls around it. While Lexie slipped her arms from her cloth coat and hung it over the chair, Grandpa placed his hat on an empty chair between them. Lexie looked around, trying not to think of missing Mama at Christmas. “It smells good in here, like . . . strawberry and chocolate and umm, caramel.”
    A curly-​haired waitress with a frilly apron came to their table, smiling. “We’ll have two of your finest ice-​cream sundaes,” Grandpa told her. “Don’t spare the whipped cream and remember to put a cherry on the top!”
    “Coming right up.” The waitress whisked behind a long marble-​topped counter. Lexie heard a metal scoop clatter against a bucket.
    She saw the ice-​cream sundaes listed on a board behind the soda fountain and was shocked to see how much they cost. When Grandpa had said she could have chocolate, she expected a nickel scoop of ice cream in a dish. Did Grandma know that Grandpa would spend fifteen cents on one ice-​cream sundae? And he got one for each of them. He would have to work a whole hour to earn that much and still not have quite enough.
    Minutes later, when the waitress brought the sundaes, Lexie forgot to worry about how much they cost. “They’re beautiful,” she breathed.
    Each boat-​shaped dish held scoops of vanilla and chocolate ice cream beneath thick blankets of chocolate syrup and creamy