Nita’s lips were softer than they looked, and less hesitant than Billie had feared. Her breath was sweet as tree blossom, and Billie began to suspect that Nita’s earlier talk of eating sparrows—not to mention trespassers—had been all bluster. Now, Billie was a firm believer in taking people as they come and extending the hand of forgiveness toward any odd little peccadilloes such as, say, eating people (although perhaps not, in the case of cannibalism, extending a literal hand), but this was nonetheless reassuring.
After the first, brief brush of their lips, Billie sank back onto her heels with a smile. “There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Nita’s brow furrowed, and her eyes developed something of the roaming habits of deer foraging for acorns. “Not sure I got it right,” she said with a
