C4 antho - Chamber Four

~96~ The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology
handed Vera a cookie, and she wolfed it down. I thought
nothing of it. We mothers fed and comforted one another’s
children all the time. I handed Vera a second cookie, which
also disappeared in the wink of an eye.
“These cookies are my favorite kind,” she piped in a voice
as pretty as a bell. Then she skipped away, back toward her
mother.
“I gave your daughter two Fig Newtons,” I told Rebecca
at the bench, when I saw her fold down a page to mark her
place.
“Oh.” She glanced up in my general direction.
“I hope that’s all right. I know people feel differently
about sugar and so on.”
Rebecca laughed sharply. “I have no opinion about
sugar.”
Vera looked down and raked her fingers through her
doll’s hair.
“I wasn’t sure what to do...she just seemed so hungry.”
“She had breakfast at nine.”
“I just know that some days, my boys get hungry every
hour....”
When Rebecca blinked, I noticed, because her gaze had
been perfectly steady until then. With that blink, I knew,
she’d put her essential self out of reach.
But I pressed on, with a dogged insistence on good will,
at which I both marvel and cringe today. “What are you reading?”
“La Nausée.”
It took a moment for the information to compute. “I admire
your powers of concentration. Most days, I wouldn’t
trust myself to get through a fashion magazine.”