Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Oh, hey there, Diana!”
Diana turned at the sound of her name and waved to one of the moms that she had met during some of the other times she’d done pickup at Eloise’s school.
Usually, she had come to retrieve Eloise with Anthony, but today he had asked her if she wouldn’t mind grabbing his daughter on her own, and Diana had practically leaped at the opportunity.
She still felt a little unsettled about the distance between her, Anthony, and Eloise these past weeks, but she was definitely reassured by Anthony asking her to get Eloise from school.
Surely, he wouldn’t do that if there was something wrong between them.
They were definitely just busy. That was what everyone had been telling her, so maybe it was time to listen.
Diana tried not to show any of these thoughts in her expression when she turned to face Stella, the woman who had called her name.
“Hey, Stella!” she greeted. “How are you feeling?” She gestured to the other woman’s rounded belly. “You have to be coming up on your due date, right?”
Stella chattered good-naturedly about the irritating things about pregnancy, making Diana laugh at several points in a story about Stella trying to pick up one of her kids’ toys from the floor.
By the time the heavily-pantomimed story was over, the school had opened its front doors, and the students were pouring out.
Stella was quickly swarmed by her three kids; Diana applauded the other woman’s energy in dealing with all their exuberance and still deciding to add a fourth child to the mix.
But then Eloise was charging in her direction, and Diana only had eyes for the grinning little girl.
“Diana, Diana, Diana!” Eloise chanted. She barely had enough time to bend down and open her arms before Eloise threw herself into the embrace. “Hi! Hi hi! Daddy told me you were doing pickup today and I was so excited all day and I told my teacher and all my friends.”
Diana laughed at Eloise’s chatter, each word of which was punctuated by a tight squeeze around Diana’s middle.
She hadn’t realized that Anthony had known so early in the day that he’d be working late.
He’d sounded as though it was a new revelation, when he’d called Diana asking her to swing by and get Eloise. But maybe Diana had just misunderstood.
“Well, I’m excited to see you too, sweet girl,” Diana said, ruffling Eloise’s dark curls and throwing a quick wave in the direction of Stella and her children, whom the pregnant woman was herding toward the car.
Diana had a brief flicker of recognition that, before Eloise came into her life, she would have been jealous of the soon-to-be mother of four.
Before she’d met Anthony and his daughter, Diana had wanted nothing more than a family of her own.
And now, occasional doubts aside, she was pretty sure that she had one.
“We’re going to your house, right?” Eloise asked, slipping her mittened hand into Diana’s and skipping beside her as they began to walk down the sidewalk. Diana’s house was close enough that she hadn’t needed to drive to get to the school.
“We definitely can if you wanted to,” Diana said. “But I thought you might want to grab a treat at Honey Bee Bakery?”
This was something that they’d done before after school, and Eloise loved the pastries at the bakery. Therefore, Diana was extremely surprised when Eloise shook her head determinedly.
“No, can we just have a snack at your house?” she asked. “I was thinking we could play fashion.”
Playing fashion was what Eloise liked to call dressing up with the contents of Diana’s closet. Since the little girl was always so respectful of Diana’s clothes that it bordered on reverent, Diana didn’t mind.
Besides, Eloise was more important than mere things, anyway. And Diana had more clothes than she needed.
“Of course,” Diana said. “Let’s head over, huh?”
Eloise kept up a steady chatter about her day as they walked. She and her friend Beth were working on drawing up a treasure map that led to a pile of acorns, which they were going to hide in a library book so that somebody could find the trove.
“If the map stays hidden for a hundred years though, they’ll probably just find trees,” Eloise explained pragmatically.
“That makes sense,” Diana agreed.
Eloise then covered which of the lessons that day she had liked (learning about prisms) and which ones she had not enjoyed at all (fractions).
“I know Daddy loves math,” Eloise said doubtfully, “but do you think it’s because he’s never tried science?”
Diana had laughed hard enough at that that she’d had to pause on the sidewalk, much to Eloise’s delight.
Back at Diana’s house, they had a quick snack of fruit, veggies, and hummus before heading up to Diana’s room to choose outfits. To Diana’s surprise, Eloise didn’t want to try on any of the clothes herself this time, instead asking if Diana would be the “fashion model” for the afternoon.
Diana was impressed when Eloise picked out something that Diana herself would have worn.
She pulled out a mid-length skirt in a shade of blue that was just too bold to be called icy.
This, she paired with a cashmere top that was a few hues deeper blue, but which had the same ribbed pattern as the skirt.
She brought a beaded short-sleeved top to wear atop this; the sheer fabric beneath the beading made the top a little hard to match, since it couldn’t be worn alone, but when Diana tried it on, she found that she liked the way it looked all together.
“You look like an ice princess,” Eloise said, clearly impressed, as Diana twirled for her perusal.
“A fashionable ice princess,” Diana said, frankly impressed.
Eloise had a great eye for fashion, one that was better than many adults that Diana knew.
That Eloise was only ten years old, and that she’d only started really embracing fashion when Diana had come into her life earlier in the year, made it even more impressive.
“You should wear these too,” Eloise said, holding up a long pair of boot socks and knee-height black leather boots. “That way, you won’t get cold, plus it will look super cool with the skirt.”
Diana smiled. Just when she was thinking about how mature Eloise’s fashion sense was, the little girl used a phrase like “super cool” to remind Diana that she was still just a kid.
“I do think I look super cool,” Diana agreed, slipping into the boots. They had a low, blocky heel, which made them easy to walk in. “Do you want to pick an outfit for you, next?”
Usually when they played in Diana’s clothes, Eloise wanted to try on about a million outfits, although she was always good at helping put things back on hangers afterward. Today though, she shook her head at the offer of even one outfit.
“No, can we do different dressing up?” she asked, grinning wide enough to show where one of her teeth behind her canines had recently fallen out.
Diana blinked. “Uh, sure,” she said. “What do you mean by different?”
This was how Diana and Eloise ended up in the bathroom doing hair and makeup together.
“Why do you have this?” Eloise asked, holding up a cold curling iron.
Diana grinned and tucked a pin into her straight, dark locks. Eloise had instructed Diana to do matching “fancy up styles,” so Diana had pinned them both into elegant French twists.
“Not all of us can have your gorgeous natural curls, babe,” she said, peering to and fro to check to see if the bobby pins were hidden in her hair. “If I want my hair to be curly, I use that thing to help.”
Eloise considered this. “Do they have a thing to make curly hair straight?”
“They do,” Diana answered. “It’s called a straight iron. I don’t have one though, since my hair goes flat on its own.”
“You’ll just have to match me curly style when we want to be the same, then,” Eloise said, completely unaware of how much she warmed Diana’s heart with the simple words.
She loved doing things with Eloise, and even though she would never try to replace Eloise’s memories of her late mother, she did love doing these sorts of mother-daughter things in particular.
“Can we do fancy makeup next?” Eloise asked, giving a sidelong glance to where Diana’s makeup bag sat on her bathroom counter.
Diana laughed. “Sure, but we’ll have to go a little lighter on you, since I don’t want to do anything that might irritate your skin. Plus…” She glanced at her watch. “I think we need to pause for dinner, first.”
Eloise looked pretty put out by this, but she nodded with only a shade of reluctance.
Diana was kind of charmed by the idea of the two of them eating tuna melts and drinking lemonade with their fancy updos, so she snapped a selfie to send Anthony later.
He’d probably get a kick out of the image too.
Eloise was normally a very slow eater, so Diana was surprised again when she made quick work of her sandwich, then put her plate in the dishwasher without any prompting from Diana.
“Makeup time?” she asked eagerly. “And maybe we could do nails too?”
“So we’re doing the full makeover?” Diana waggled her eyebrows. “I feel like I’m in a movie.”
“That sounds like a boring movie,” Eloise said, with all the confidence of a child. “It seems really boring to watch, but it’s fun to do.”
Diana had no argument for this, so they went upstairs again. Diana, at Eloise’s direction, did “real fancy” makeup on herself, and then let the younger girl smudge some lipstick on her mouth and a little bit of blush on her cheeks.
“Do you have white nail polish?” Eloise asked in between making faces in the mirror, clearly delighted at the way she looked with the slight amount of makeup on.
Diana had offered to let Eloise apply the lip and cheek color herself, expecting Eloise, like most little girls, to go rather heavy-handed on the application, but Eloise had insisted that Diana do it.
Apparently everything had to be “fancy style” today.