“You think so?”
She nodded. “Valentina says smiling is good for you.”
“Does she now?”
“Uh-huh. She smiles a lot. Even when she’s sad.”
I kept my eyes on the road. “Do you think she’s sad often?” I asked.
Lucia shrugged one shoulder. “Sometimes. But I can tell you make her smile. Even if you don’t smile back.”
That was a lot of insight from someone so small. I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just nodded. I didn’t know if I deserved credit for making Valentina smile—for anything—but I was glad she did.
“I think she likes you,” Lucia whispered.
“I hope so,” I said before I could stop myself.
“Do you like her too?”
Leave it to a child to drop the kind of question adults took years to ask.
“Valentina’s a good person.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She sounded just like her aunt. Wouldn’t let it go. Somehow I found myself answering honestly—probably more honestly than was smart.
“Yes,” I admitted slowly. “I do.”
Lucia made this little humming sound. “Do you think she’s pretty?”
It wasn’t really a fair question, because yes, obviously, Valentina was pretty. More than pretty. “Pretty” didn’t even begin to cover it, honestly, but I wasn’t about to explain that to her.
So I just said, “She’s very pretty.”
Lucia didn’t react right away, only stared out the window as if she were carefully plotting something. I thought briefly the interrogation was over.
But then she asked, “Does she know you like her?”
Did Valentina know?
She probably did, but we’d never really talked about it. Not in actual words. Valentina and I talked in arguments and sarcasm, sometimes silence. Anyway, it seemed dangerous to admit something like that out loud.
“I haven’t told her.”
She frowned, clearly disappointed in me. “Why not?”
“Sometimes adults don’t say everything they’re thinking,” I explained carefully.
“That’s weird,” she argued. “You should just tell her.”
“Maybe,” I conceded, suppressing the smile that threatened to slip. She was so direct, just like Valentina. “It’s not always easy to say things like that.”
Lucia looked skeptical. “Why?”
“Because people don’t always know how someone else will react. That can make them nervous.”
She tilted her head slightly, puzzled. “Are you nervous?”
