Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

weaver who started Artists for Peace? She told you allabout her house in Albuquerque and her little boy, Kyle? We showed you where New Mexico was on the map. Do you remember how much you liked Norris?”
    Blue nodded in blissful ignorance.
    “Well, guess what?” Olivia said. “Your mom and Tom and I arranged for you to go live with Norris now.”
    Blue didn’t understand. She gazed into their wide, fake smiles. Tom rubbed his chest through his flannel shirt and blinked his eyes like he might cry. “Olivia and I are going to miss you very much, but you’ll have a yard to play in.”
    That’s when she got it. She started to gag. “No! I don’t want a yard. I want to stay here! You promised. You said I could live here forever!”
    Olivia rushed her to the bathroom and steadied her head while she threw up. Tom slumped on the edge of the old, chipped bathtub. “We wanted you to stay, but…that was before we knew about the baby. Things have gotten complicated with money and everything. At Norris’s house, there’ll be another kid to play with. Won’t that be fun?”
    “I’ll have a kid to play with here!” Blue had sobbed. “I’ll have the baby. Don’t make me go. Please! I’ll be good. I’ll be so good I won’t bother you ever.”
    They’d all started to cry then, but in the end, Olivia and Tom had driven her to Albuquerque in their rusty blue van and sneaked away without saying good-bye.
    Norris was fat and showed Blue how to weave. Nine-year-old Kyle taught her card games and played Star Wars with her. One month slipped into another. Gradually, Blue stopped thinking so much about Tom and Olivia and started to love Norris and Kyle. Kyle was her secret brother, Norris her secret mother, and she was going to stay with them forever.
    Then Virginia Bailey, her real mother, came back from Central America and took her away. They went to Texas, where they stayedwith a group of activist nuns and spent every spare minute together. She and her mother read books, did art projects, practiced Spanish, and had long talks about everything. A whole day would pass without Blue thinking about Norris and Kyle. Blue fell back in love with her gentle mother and was inconsolable when Virginia left.
    Norris had gotten married again, so Blue couldn’t go back to Albuquerque. The nuns kept her until the school year ended, and Blue transferred her love to Sister Carolyn. Sister Carolyn drove Blue to Oregon, where Virginia had arranged for her to stay with an organic farmer named Blossom. Blue clung so desperately to Sister Carolyn when she tried to drive off that Blossom had to pull her away.
    The cycle started all over again, except this time Blue held a little of herself back from Blossom, and when she had to leave, she discovered it wasn’t as painful as before. From then on, she was more careful. With each subsequent move, she distanced herself more from the people she stayed with until, finally, the leaving barely hurt at all.
    Blue gazed toward the hotel room bed. Dean Robillard was horny, and he expected her to accommodate him, but he didn’t know how deep her aversion ran to casual hookups. In college, she’d watched her girlfriends, high on Sex and the City , sleep with whomever they wanted whenever they’d pleased. But instead of feeling empowered, most of them had ended up depressed. Blue had suffered from enough short-term relationships during her childhood, and she wasn’t adding to the list. If she didn’t count Monty, which she didn’t, she’d only had two lovers, both artistic, self-absorbed men happy to leave her in charge. It worked better that way.
    The bathroom doorknob turned. She had to be careful how she dealt with Dean for fear he’d leave tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, tact wasn’t her forte.
    He came out of the bathroom, a towel looped low around his hips. He looked like a Roman god taking a breather in the middle of an orgy while he waited for the next temple virgin to be sent his way. But as