one story ends and another begins

Rosie was explaining to Asa that everyone could be a Mom or a Dad. She wore her bright pink tam that Ellie crocheted for her. Rosie said it was her poetry cap. She always wore it when she wrote her best stuff. Of course, it was just scribble and Asa knew she didn't really know what a poem was, but she felt big for saying it since Hannah read a bunch of nursery rhymes to her and told her they were poems. And Dr. Seuss was the best poet, ever.

Asa always felt he learned a lot around Rosie. He always felt like the student. He was a lot like that with the teenagers who came to the library. He was fascinated about what was hot and what was not. So he sat there in the floor next to Rosie's little make-shift desk, that was really just a little red wooden table and chair, but she had her crayons and markers with a few colorful notebooks to keep her company.

"Daddy knows something." She looked at him serious and decided Asa needed to wear her pink stretchy tam which looked more like a small shower cap that couldn't quite cover the crown of his head.

"Really?" Asa left the Tam alone. He was captivated now, wondering what she'd tell him.

"Its about Mommy." She was dead serious.

"Mommy?" Well, he was serious too. He was listening. He always did. Rosie seemed to be the first to know everything.

"She still loves him." Rosie nodded. It was not an April Fools joke. A lump lodged in Asa's throat. Suddenly, he felt completely left out..maybe in the cold.

"She's gonna have a baby." Rosie told him. "I know what the word pregnant means."

Asa almost burst into laughter because it was a struggle to figure out she said the word pregnant when it came out more like "reggerun-nant."

"Don't worry, its not his." She sighed. "He doesn't like her hugging him."

Asa just nodded. This was news to him.

"She cried, you know, about the other baby." She made it sound as if there had been a mystery baby, but he guessed she meant Evan. "Don't make her cry."

"I won't." He promised.

She hugged him then. And Asa thought he might cry on her shoulder, possibly with happiness.