“And now we’re going to have lunch tomorrow.”

“And that’s what the girl gang wants to talk about tonight?”

“I have to show them the outfits I might wear tomorrow. I’m thinking about my purple jeans and the green sweater, but I know that Kelly is going to suggest the pink sweater. I think green pops more. Do you think I should keep my hair like this?” she asked patting her afro-puffs.

John shrugged. “Sure, your hair always looks cute.”

“Man, I wish I had braids like Victoria. Do you think I could get them?”

He crossed the intersection before answering. “That’s one of those ‘Ask Mom’ questions.”

“Victoria’s friend, Regina, did hers.”

“I don’t think that’s happening any time too soon,” John said, pausing at a stop sign.

“You could ask Victoria,” Becca pressed. “When are you seeing her again?”

He did his best to control his breathing by twisting his hands against the steering wheel. He winced at the sharp pain in his injured hand. “Victoria and I are finished working together.”

“But she’s your girlfriend,” his niece said. “I mean...” She screwed up her face as if she too were speaking French to him.

John was getting just a little tired of the women in his family treating him like a small boy. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“You’re in a bad mood,” she said, with a suspicious expression that mirrored her mother’s. “Did you guys break up?”

He couldn’t wait to drop this child off at her grandmother’s house. “What made you think that she was my girlfriend in the first place?”

Becca laughed, her large brown eyes twinkling with mischief. “That’s easy,” she said with a broad grin. “Because you looked like Connor when you talked to her.”

“Excuse me?”

“When we saw her at the dress shop, you were all, ‘Uh, hello, uh Dr. Reese,’ and you turned three shades of red.”

John didn’t have anything clever to add to this conversation. His twelve-year-old niece had found him out. She had no doubt caught some of the Donovan women gossip as well. The four of them were becoming more and more insufferable as he traversed this...whatever the hell it was, with Victoria. He certainly didn’t need a child to make declarations on something she didn’t understand. “What did your grandmother tell you about grown folks’ business?”

Becca crossed her skinny arms over her chest and stuck out her little pointed chin in defiance. “It’s for grown folks.”

“That’s right. Get back to me when you’re thirty and we’ll talk. For now, just worry about this Connor boy and lunchtime chicken nuggets.”