"The thing you said. When you were on the floor. Say it again."
"I said a lot of things on the floor," Cass said. "Most of them I'd better not say in front of you."
The girl shook her head, impatient. She had very dark eyes, nearly black, and a little crease between her eyebrows like a grown woman's. "You said 'Oh, well.' Like that. Oh, well." She did a voice. It was not a bad voice. It went low and then curled up at the end, a little rueful, a little amused. "And you said 'Honey.'"
The man said, "Romy."
"I'm just asking."
"You're staring, is what you're doing. It's not polite to stare." He looked up at Cass apologetically. "She's been like this all week. Everything's a question."
"That's all right," Cass said. "I like questions. They're cheaper than the answers."
And the girl's whole face changed. It opened up like a window. She put both of her small hands flat on the table and leaned across the napkin triangles and said, in an urgent, wondering whisper, "Cheaper than the answers. That's what she says. That's what she says at the end of the hen one."
Cass did not understand. She smiled the way you smile at children when you do not understand them, and she was about to say something about the pie case, because the pie case had never failed her yet, when the girl turned to her father and said the thing that would rearrange, over the following months, a great deal more than either of them could have guessed.
"Daddy," Romy said. "Can she join us?"
The man went red to the tips of his ears. It was really something to watch. It started at his collar and climbed.
"Romy, she's working."
"Not now. Later. When she's done working. Can she join us later?"
"Honey, we don't—that's not how—" He looked at Cass with the expression of a man who has been dropped into deep water in his clothes. "I'm sorry. She doesn't usually. She's not usually like this with people."
"It's all right."