Six
“No no, not like that. You look like a goose on stilts, darling! Don’t laugh, I’m being serious. One more time, Louise. Aim for graceful, if you can.”
She didn’t aim for graceful. She never did. Instead, she aimed for funny.
Nothing entertained Mum more than helping Lulu learn new dance steps. And if there was one thing Lulu was committed to, one hundred percent, it was making her mother smile. She kept a mental scoreboard of smiles versus grimaces of pain. If the smiles outpaced the grimaces on any given day, she considered it a good day.
She tried the step again, jump, extend, twirl.
“Better, Mum?”
“Not even a tiny bit.”
They both laughed and Lulu propped herself against the wall for a short break. Mum was getting tired, she could tell. It was the way her eyes got glassy and h
