The Daddy Dance Read Online Free PDF Page A

front of the open pantry. Her hand was shoved deep in a bag of cookies, and telltale chocolate crumbs ringed her lips. Kat’s reproach was automatic. “Are you eating cookies for dinner?”
    “No.” Jenny eyed her defiantly.
    “Don’t lie to me, young lady.” Ach , Kat thought. Did I really just say that? I sound like everyone’s stereotype of the strict maiden aunt. Annoyed, Kat looked around the kitchen. Used paper plates cascaded out of an open trash can. A jar of peanut butter lay on its side, its lid teetering at a crazy angle. A dozen plastic cups were strewn across the counter, with varying amounts of sticky residue pooling inside.
    On top of the toaster oven curled three bananas. Kat broke one off from the bunch and passed it to her niece. “Here”, she said. “Eat this.”
    “I don’t like them when they’re brown.”
    “That’s dinner.”
    “You said we were ordering a pizza.”
    “Pizza isn’t good for you.”
    “Mommy likes pizza.”
    “Mommy would.” Kat closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This wasn’t the time or the place to get into a discussion about Rachel. Kat dug in the pantry, managing to excavate a sealed packet of lemon-pepper tuna. “Here. You can have tuna and a banana. I’ll go to the grocery store tomorrow.”
    “How are you going to do that, when you don’t drive? It’s too far to walk.”
    Good question. “I’ll manage.”
    Kat took a quick tour of the rest of the house while Jenny ate her dinner. Alas, the kitchen wasn’t some terrible aberration. The living room was ankle-deep in pizza boxes and gossip magazines. The disgusting bathroom hadn’t been cleaned in centuries. Jenny’s bedroom was a sea of musty, tangled sheets and stuffed animals.
    Back in the kitchen, Jenny’s sullen silence was nearly enough to make Kat put cookies back on the menu. Almost. But Jenny didn’t need cookies. She needed some rules. Some structure. A pattern or two in her life. Starting now.
    “Okay, kiddo. We’re going to get some cleaning done.”
    “Cleaning?” Jenny’s whine stretched the word into four or five syllables at least.
    Kat turned to the stove—ironically, the cleanest thing in the house, because Rachel had never cooked a meal in her life. Kat twisted the old-fashioned timer to give them fifteen minutes to work. “Let’s go. Fifteen minutes, to make this kitchen look new.”
    Jenny stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. Squaring her shoulders, though, and ignoring the blooming ache in her foot, Kat started to tame the pile of paper plates. “Let’s go,” she said. “March! You’re in charge of throwing away those paper cups!”
    With the use of three supersize trash bags, they made surprising progress. When those fifteen minutes were done, Kat set the alarm again, targeting the mess in the living room. The bathroom was next, and finally Jenny’s room. The little girl was yawning and rubbing her eyes by the time they finished.
    “Mommy never makes me clean up.”
    “I’m not Mommy,” Kat said. She was so not Mommy—not in a million different ways. But she knew what was good for Jenny. She knew what had been good for her, even when she was Jenny’s age. Setting goals. Developing strategies. Following rules. When Kat had lived in her parents’ home, Susan had built the foundation for orderly management of life’s problems. Unlike her sister, Kat had absorbed those lessons with a vengeance. Her rules were the only thing that had gotten her through those first homesick months when she moved to New York. As Jenny started to collapse on the living-room couch, Kat said, “It’s time for you to go to bed.”
    “I haven’t watched TV yet!”
    “No TV. It’s a school night.”
    “Mommy lets me watch TV every night.”
    “I’m not Mommy,” Kat repeated, wondering if she should record the sentence, so that she could play it back every time she needed it.
    Over the next half hour, Kat found out that she was cruel and heartless and evil and mean,