She knew it was a lie. But that was fine. She could get Pia and swing back for Jax in a few minutes.
“Good morning, Pia,” she said softly, knocking on the little one’s door.
It swung open as if it hadn’t been all the way shut.
Was Pia afraid to sleep alone at night in the new house? Yasmine had seen her off to bed, but if she had awoken in the night, maybe she had been scared.
She made a note to herself to bring up the idea of sleeping in a new house causally at some point and see if Pia reacted. She couldn’t help her if she didn’t know something was happening.
She stepped inside but saw that Pia wasn’t in her bed.
“Oh no, where’s Pia?” she said out loud, smiling inwardly. Boy, did this kid like to hide.
But she checked the closet, the attached bathroom, even under the bed, and there was no Pia.
Surely, the child wouldn’t be hiding somewhere else in the palace.
Yasmine forced herself to breathe deeply and not panic for the second time this morning. She would be able to find her.
But before she could instigate a household search, Pia marched into the room, holding an enormous muffin and wearing what looked like the entire contents of an extensive costume collection.
“Good morning, Yasmine,” she said, the words slightly garbled because of the large bite of muffin in her mouth.
“Well, hello, Pia,” Yasmine said. “I couldn’t find you.”
“You have to be the first one downstairs if you want the biggest muffin,” Pia said wisely.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Yasmine said. “Thank you. Now as soon as you’re done eating, we’ll have to get you dressed. What do you like to wear to your play group mornings?”
“I am dressed,” Pia said, rolling her eyes.
Yasmine looked her over again.
For such a tiny person, Pia had a lot going on. She wore what looked like a brown sheriff’s vest with a medal of some sort affixed to the chest. Underneath appeared to be a princess gown in vibrant purple with a grass skirt on top. Turquoise cowboy boots with a slight heel, and an enormous straw hat festooned with plastic flowers finished off the ensemble.
“Is this your school uniform?” Yasmine asked with a straight face, hoping she could get Pia to melt into giggles and reveal the truth.
True to form, Pia shrieked with delight and tore around the room yelling the word uniform over and over.
Unfortunately, she did not choose to illuminate Yasmine any further on what she was wearing. Yasmine took another tack.
“You look really cool,” Yasmine said when Pia slowed down. “But the most fashionable people have a secret.”
“What’s the secret?” Pia demanded, stopping in front of Yasmine, her eyes wide with curiosity.
“The best way to make the coolest part of your outfit noticeable is to make sure everything else you are wearing is very sophisticated,” Yasmine confided.
“What is sophisticated?” Pia asked, probably hoping it meant covered in sequins or splattered with glow-in-the-dark paints.
“Sophisticated means elegant and worldly,” Yasmine said. “And in the case of clothing it usually means simple. When the rest of your clothing is elegant and simple, it allows your most dramatic piece of clothing or jewelry to take the spotlight.”
Pia looked down at herself as if trying to decide which part of her get-up was the real star.
“To me, those boots are the most dramatic and interesting part of your outfit,” Yasmine said. “They look like something a model would wear.”
Pia glanced up at her dubiously.
“Or a very fashionable bank robber,” Yasmine added quickly. “But with the rest of your outfit on, they were the last thing I noticed.”