Chapter 58
Luna entered the kitchen, just showered and dressed for the night. “How do I look?”
Dilly was kneading the last fluff of dough for the party and her arms from the elbow down were coated in flour. “Beautiful, like the gossamer wings of a dragonfly.”
Chickadee looked up from her notebook. “Bullshit, you’re insulting dear Luna’s family heritage. She looks beautiful like the soft wings of a moth.”
“You’re both correct. But more to the point — do I look pregnant? I don’t want to look pregnant, not until Beckett knows.” She pulled the cardigan open and turned back and forth, showing off her protruding stomach.
Dilly cocked her head to the left and right. “The cardigan covers it, perfectly.”
Chickadee added, “Perfectly as if you’ve swallowed a watermelon half-down —
Dilly said, “Chickie!”
“It’s true!”
Luna giggled. “It’s totally true.” Then her mood spiraled downward. “I thought I would have more time, but when Beckett comes home, I’ll have to hide behind a chair until I tell him.”
Chickadee came around the counter and tugged Luna’s cardigan closed. “He’ll come home. You’ll tell him. Then you get to start your lives, both of you in the same place. No worries, right? We have poetry to read!”
Luna nodded, sniffling to cover the tears that threatened to come.
Chickadee returned her are of the counter that was her designated office. “I plan to read a Shakespearean sonnet, it is beautiful and has been revered for centuries, and I will read it directly to Dilly and everyone will ooh and aah, until she stands up. She’ll read a, Little Ditty, as she will call it, that she wrote herself, about wild grass—”
“Bees,” said Dilly, rolling a pin across her flattened dough.
“Bees — and she will turn a phrase, coat a word, and spin a phrase until we are all weeping with joy and laughing with sadness, and everyone will forget my dumbass Shakespearean poem.”
Dilly grabbed Chickadee's face and gave her a kiss leaving a powdery handprint on her cheek. “Thanks babe, that’s why I write poetry, for the glory.”
Chickadee wiped her cheek with a towel. “That’s how it goes, Luna, try to read your poem before her poem. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I was going to recite a poem my mother told me about dolphins.”
Dilly clapped her hands, sending up a cloud of dust. “Perfect! Let me toss this dough in the oven and we’ll get the chairs set up in the garden.”
