LOVE CHILD

(LC) Chapter One…1

When I see you smile.

Bette rushed through the front door.

“Hey, Angel!” She called out and dropped her briefcase, her jacket and her keys while looking around for Angelica.  

“Angelica?”  She called again as she kicked off her high heels and after ten hours of having her feet tightly constricted by pointy-toed shoes she wiggled her finally freed toes. She hurriedly walked to the bottom of the stairs and shouted up.

“Angel I’m home!”

“Oh, okay.” Snapping back from being so focused on her task at hand, Angelica finally heard her Mother. “I’ll be down in a sec, Momma.” Angelica quickly clicked the log-off button again less than two minutes after she had logged on. She closed her laptop as she listened to Bette’s voice coming from downstairs.

“I’m sorry I’m late but I’ll be ready in ten minutes. I hope you didn’t eat without me.”

Angelica sighed, she was hoping for at least twenty or thirty minutes to call and talk, but she knew it was best that dinner came first. She was a little disappointed yet a little relieved, so she calmed herself knowing she would have far more time after dinner. She took up her cellphone, set it to vibrate and pushed it down into her jeans pocket deciding to stick to her routine plan – dinner with Momma Bee first and then call New York afterwards.

She looked around her room and before she headed out of her room door, she took up her test paper, looked at it and held it behind her back finding it almost impossible now to stop smiling. Now she was more anxious to see the look on her Momma Bee’s face than anything else.

“Hey. There you are.”

Coming from freshening up in the powder-room and drying her hands on a paper napkin Bette looked up and smiled as she watched Angelica finally coming downstairs. “I was saying that I hope you didn’t eat without me.”

“I didn’t.”

“Good then you must be hungry.”

“I am a little.”

They met at the foot of the stairs and with her free hand, Angelica hugged her Momma Bee’s waist in a gesture of hello and they walked to the kitchen.