"Matthew wants me to be his girlfriend." Jeanne says suddenly. I'm pushing a shopping cart across the aisles in the supermarket, but her words make me come to a sudden stop.

"And what did you tell him?" I ask her, tentative.

"I told him that he should learn how to tie his shoes before looking for a girlfriend." She says, putting a box of corn flakes in the cart. I let out a loud laugh that fills the aisle, and I have to stifle down. She continues: "I don't get why everyone laughs at that so much. He really doesn't know how to tie them!"

"Then why don't you teach him how to do it?"

"Because!" She snaps, sighing in the same exasperated way Mathilde does when they play together. As close knit as they were the day they met, they became even tighter now that we live with her. "If he learns, I'd have no reason to say I don't want to be his girlfriend anymore!"

"Well, Jeanne. You can always say you don't like him, right?"

She looks at me with her big owl eyes, and stuffs her hands inside her pockets.

"I don't know if I don't like him, Mom."

"Oh? And why is that?"

"Well..." She says, picking a coffee bag and placing it in the cart. "Everyone makes fun of him because he's small and wears glasses."

"Uh-huh." I reply. "And what do you think?"

"I think he's smart, even if he doesn't know how to tie his shoes. And he's good at drawing." She says, not a hint of shyness in her voice. It has to be lovely to be her age and to be able to speak your mind like that. "But it scares me that, if I am his friend, everyone else will make fun of me, too. You know what I mean?"

"I know exactly what you mean."

"You do? Granny doesn't get it." Yes, she calls Mathilde Granny now. "She says 'to hell with those damned brats'."

"Language!"

"Sorry." She says, but not really bothered by it. "That's what Granny said."

"And even if her choice of words is poor at best, she's probably right."

"Cynthia Dawson?" A male voice behind us calls my name, and I turn around to see whose voice this is. This tall, thin man with thick glasses can't be other than...

"Ian McAllister?" He's very much my own version of Jeanne's Matthew, from back when I was in school.

"Hey! It's been... a long time." He says, all hunched, fidgeting with his hands as he used to do as a kid.

"Yes, indeed! I haven't seen you after you moved to that science oriented high school in New Jersey."

"Yes, and then I applied to New York University..." And then he smiles, and I see that all those years using braces paid off. He has a very nice smile. He notices Jeanne right away. "Is this...?"

"My daughter, yes."

"Hi. I'm Jeanne." She says, walking up to him and actually shaking his hand. "You look like Matthew."

"Oh, do I?"

"Yes." She replies with finality, shoving her hands in her pockets again. "Are you interested in my mom?"

"Jeanne!" I chastise, feeling my blood rise to my cheeks. This girl is going to kill me one of these days. Ian chuckles, and just like that, his shyness lifts off and flies out the front door. "Please don't mind that..."

"No, it's okay." He says, and he lifts his eyes back at me. "You used to be like this too, never mincing words."

"Is that so?"

"What? You don't remember?" He says, now comfortable enough to raise his voice a little. He gives me a warm smile. "Perhaps we could remember our old days through a cup of coffee, sometime?"

"So you are interested."

"Jeanne!"

But we all laugh. A few minutes later he's gone, but he leaves me his number, just in case I decide a coffee isn't going to harm me.