Where no one had been sitting (Tina had mumbled something about tax season and abandoned her chair when the make-out session started), there was, suddenly, Jessica’s son, about age ten.
He said nothing. He didn’t even look at us. We kept asking where his sister was and he kept shaking his head while fat tears rolled down his cheeks. He didn’t want food. Didn’t want to talk. Ignored Marc’s gentle coaxing and my increasingly worried questions and Sinclair’s furrowed brow
(Perhaps it’s best not to push, my love.)
and we were following him into the mudroom when he disappeared. It had been a thirty-second encounter that rattled the shit out of us. Sinclair, who had lost a twin to an ugly death, said what we were thinking: “My suggestion is we not mention this particular iteration to Jessica or Dick.”
And we haven’t.
“Now what’s this?” Jessica said, gently turning her son’s arm to get a better look at a long scrape, a red line standing out against his golden skin. What is it about the undersides of kids’ chubby arms that makes you just want to devour them? “What happened, baby?”
“The cat we don’t have yet scratched me,” came the cheerful reply. “It was turr’ble.”
“He cried,” the girl added.
“I did not! But I need more cookies, Mommy; it makes me upset to talk about it.”
“Oh, nice try,” I said with pure admiration. “But you have no idea how heartless your mother—”
“One more, and that’s it,” Jessica warned.
“—can be in her ruthless determination to— What?”
A chorus of yays.
“Dammit, Jess, you’re poaching on my territory,” I argued. “I’m the fun aunt who hands out cookies and you’re the hard-ass mom who’s no fun at all but they’ll appreciate it when they get older while secretly loving me more!”
“Two cookies,” Jessica said with total bitchy malicious intent, and beamed at the stereo cheers. I was marshaling my arguments (“No, you shut up!”) when the twins slipped down from their stools and went into the mudroom to play with Fur and Burr. (That was another thing: they always knew who Fur and Burr were as well. A psycho-paranormal-ologist (if there was such a thing) would have a field day.
“And furthermore, as reigning Cool Aunt, it’s my God-given right to ignore your fascist toddler rules in order to—”
“Betsy.”
“Dammit!” They’d slipped away again, without us noticing again. Again! The only things in the mudroom were Fur and Burr, the washer and dryer, and two wrinkled newborns.
Until this started happening, the puppies had had the run of the mudroom, their own place to nap, play, and poop in the rare moments when there wasn’t someone around to spend time with them. After an eternity of bitching, Sinclair had blocked off a portion of it for the Amazing Disappearing Reappearing Babies. Sometimes when the babies reappeared, Fur’s and Burr’s shrill yaps would alert the household.
“God, it’s like living with tiny twin Batmans.”
“Yes. Well. No one said being an honorary aunt would be easy.” Jessica had picked up Thing One and I’d grabbed Thing Two, and now she turned to face me head-on. “We have to talk.”
Shit.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
I saw at once Marc and Tina knew what was up, because they sort of swooped in, grabbed babies and puppies, and swooped out, bound for parts unknown. I looked at my closest, dearest friend and raised my eyebrows.
“Like that, is it?”
“Like what?” Dick had just walked into the kitchen, home from work. He’d stopped long enough to lock his gun in one of the safes (his weird babies had forced extensive babyproofing pretty much immediately), but hadn’t changed clothes: gray slacks, white dress shirt with a brown and blue tie, chocolate-colored jacket tailored to accommodate his swimmer’s shoulders and nine-millimeter Glock. His hair—short, blond, military cut—was mussed (which was amazing, given the lack of length), and his blue eyes were slightly less exhausted than usual. He gave Jessica a kiss and settled on the stool beside her.
“Do people at the Cop Shop know we’ve got reporters sniffing around?” I asked, honestly curious.
“First of all, we prefer ‘Pig Paddy.’ Second,” he continued, ignoring my gasp of horror (I had great respect for the police and would no sooner refer to the good people at 367 Grove Street as pigs as I’d pair flip-flops with a formal), “a couple of the guys asked me about it but I blew it off. None of the suits were worried enough about it to want to see me.” Yet was unspoken. “And I’m glad to keep doing that until Tina and Sinclair figure out how to thwart the Antichrist—”