credit chit burning a hole in your pocket.
Somehow it didn’t come up in conversation until Cara was attacking several rows of very-cool-looking dresses that her credit chit was now zero. Nada. Empty.
“Auntie Teresa took me shopping while you were meeting with those old guys,” Cara admitted. “We got the most gad dress. It flashes lights, and you can have it send out messages. Dada can make them flash real fast.”
Kris raised an eyebrow to her maid, Cara’s only flesh-andblood aunt.
Abby shrugged. “Which of those unspoken questions do you want me to answer first. Nelly, it’s your kid that has my niece flashing ‘those’ words.”
“And I am not happy at all. At all at all,” Nelly said, sounding more like a granny than a proud mother. “I am trying to explain to Dada that humans have ‘things’ that are not at all logical. She is learning.”
“Mighty slowly for a supercomputer,” Abby said, dryly.
Kris wanted the other half of her questioning eyebrow answered. “About her zero credit balance? For a spy, you’re letting your boss get strangely surprised.”
“Oh, that,” Abby said. “Doctors shouldn’t operate on their own families, and you can’t expect me to be all that good of a spy where my own flesh and blood is concerned. Besides, that girl is learning from the best of us.”
“Worst of you,” Nelly put in.
“Whatever. She got in her shopping run with Teresa de Alva while I was biting my tongue and sitting on my hands listening to you and your family not communicate. Then we had to move down here, and when we got things all settled, somehow it didn’t come up. She didn’t lie to me. It just never came up.”
“Until we walked in here,” Kris said with a half smile teasing at her lips.
Cara was back with a surprisingly colorful and traditional peasant dress. The bustline highlighted that the twirling sprite wearing it was not a little girl anymore, but Cara didn’t seem to notice.
What Kris was delighted to notice was that Cara’s smile had come out to play once more.
After Kris and her Marines had liberated Cara and flattened Port Royal, Cara had been painfully quiet. Now she walked where before she skipped or ran. Worst, that infectious smile that played on her lips had gone away.
Kids have to grow up. Inevitably, they learn that the world is not as safe as the adults around them try to make it. Somewhere in the process, that childish laugh, the innocent smile, get lost.
Kris could only imagine what Cara had gone through as a slave on a drug plantation. Kris had feared Cara’s smile was gone forever.
Today, for this bangle or that glam, it came back out.
So Kris paid for the dress. And the skirt and blouse. And both pairs of shoes.
“Shopping therapy,” Nelly said, as they waited for Cara to try on “One, last dress. No more.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Abby asked the computer.
“I read it somewhere. Mind you, with this princess lady, I’ve never actually seen it in operation, but, hey, I can recognize it when I see it.”
The three of them fell silent. Somewhere back in the dressing room, Cara was singing. Kris tried to remember when she’d ever been so happy she just had to sing.
She couldn’t.
“Are you going to send us away now?” Abby asked.
“Send you away?” Kris started at the abrupt change of topic.
“There are not going to be many dress balls where you’re heading. And not a lot of snooping that a maid can do.” Abby swallowed something hard. “I figure you’ll want to leave me and Cara behind.”
Kris shook her head. “I don’t think I could afford to break your contract. You had a good lawyer draw it up, and my mom never did have a head for legalese.”
Abby snorted. “What paperwork have you been reading?”
“Maybe it wasn’t paper I was reading. Maybe it had something to do with a human heart. If you want to come, you’ll always have a berth by my side.”
“And Cara?”
“Do you really want to take her out on the limb I’ll no doubt be sawing off?” Kris asked.
Abby didn’t answer for a long minute. Her eyes were on the door to the dressing room, but Kris suspected, from the distant look, that she was seeing something else.
“Cara told me that when she was captured she kept going because she remembered Bruce saying ‘Marines never leave anyone behind.’ Poor kid, Cara was none too sure she qualified for that promise, but she kept holding to it, no matter