Happily Ever Ninja(19)
“You’re early!” Sandra rushed forward as soon as she spotted me and stopped short of wrapping me in a hug. I understood her surprise. I was never early. People with children are only ever early by accident.
“Goodness, Fiona. What’s the deal with the cake? That’s the largest cake I’ve ever seen.”
“My neighbor accidentally ate a slice of the coconut cake I made yesterday, so he went out and bought this one to replace it.” I handed Greg the cake so I could accept Sandra’s hug.
“He has a habit of overcompensation,” Greg added with a note of cheerful sarcasm.
I gave him a warning look. He winked at me, the stinker.
“Well, hello, Mr. Fiona.” Sandra grinned at my husband, using the name she’d assigned him years ago. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Are you still trying to teach Grace how to code?”
“If she doesn’t learn about data structures at home, she’ll just learn about it on the streets.”
Sandra laughed. This was Greg’s stock answer for all the age-inappropriate activities he tried to teach the kids. Most of them were odd, but benign, like computer programming. However some—like coaching them to win every argument by declaring, That sounds like something Hitler would say—were much less benign.
“Are you back for good?”
Back for good meant a month, maybe two, if we were lucky.
“No, just twenty-four hours.”
“E-gads! How long was the flight?”
“Twenty-two hours,” he answered smoothly, like it was no big deal. For him it wasn’t a big deal. His longest trip home had taken three days. That was four years ago when he’d traveled home from Nepal. One leg of his journey was by pack mule.
Greg had informed me in the car on the way over that the company had evacuated all rig workers from the site for four days and given them comp time. Instead of staying in South Africa, he’d decided to jump on a plane so we could spend a day and a half together. The older I get the more I understood everything is relative. One person’s travel horror story is another person’s dream vacation.
“Why are you holding them hostage at the door?” Elizabeth appeared and reprimanded Sandra, reaching for my arm and pulling me forward.
“I’m not holding them hostage, I’m welcoming them.”
“For the record, I do not feel adequately welcomed,” Greg piped in with his typical contrariness.
I patted him on the shoulder. “You’ll survive.”
“I will suffer through. Where are the men folk?”
“Around,” Elizabeth said distractedly as she guided me away. “Sorry, Greg, we need Fiona. We’re having a crisis.”
“No one is better in a crisis than Fiona.” I glanced at Sandra as she said this, lifting her chin toward the cake in Greg’s possession. “Be a dear and put the cake in the kitchen?”
“Fine,” he mock-grumbled. “But if you don’t return my wife to me in a half hour, I will orchestrate a new crisis.”
“Such as?” Elizabeth paused, obviously wanting to hear whatever humorous thing Greg was about to say. He had this reputation with my friends—hilariously wrong in the head—and they often compared his jokes to a clown car accident, unfortunate but funny.
“Where’s Alex?”
Sandra gave Greg the side-eye. “What do you want with my husband?”
“I thought we might check out what the Senate has been up to.”
Elizabeth didn’t comprehend his horrid threat. “Meaning?”
“Don’t you dare.” Sandra narrowed her eyes, administering a piercing squint at my husband; of course she would catch on at once because terrible minds think alike.
I gave him a withering look and tossed over my shoulder, “No hacking into government websites again, Greg.”
“I’ll see you in a half hour, dearest.”
There was a short pause before Elizabeth gasped, finally understanding his meaning, “You did that? You put up those pictures of that senator? The naked selfies on the house dot gov main page?”
“I did no such thing.” Greg sounded and looked insulted, then added, “Alex did it. I was merely the Pinky to his Brain.”
Sandra gave Greg one more dirty look before pushing us around the corner and out of earshot. Meanwhile, Elizabeth was laughing.
“I can’t believe he did that. Where did he get the pictures?”
Sandra’s irritated expression quickly dissipated and she chuckled lightly. “He is so delightfully wrong.”
“It’s not funny,” I said. It wasn’t funny, not really. Granted, this senator was responsible for passing laws making federal programs negotiations of drug prices with Big Pharma illegal, which cost taxpayers millions. And this senator had been slated to become a lobbyist with Big Pharma—so, basically, he was corrupt and had sold his vote.