Louise breathed out instead of screaming. “Why else would anyone steal toothbrushes?”
“That is damning, but it’s still not proof.” Their mother took four plates out of the dish cabinet and handed them to Louise. “Dinner is ready. We’re eating.”
Dinner was frozen lasagna, green beans and a tossed salad. Simple. Inexpensive. Louise wondered what the Flying Monkey was having for dinner. Lobster? Steak? Were the Desmarais making small talk of murder and kidnapping as they ate on fine china with real silverware instead of stainless steel? What were they planning? Why was Tristan at their school?
* * *
That night, Louise dreamed of the babies. They were playing in mud with nothing much more on than underwear. Brown hair and walnut skin and eyes full of mischief. They looked like peas in a pod, but she knew only one was a boy and three were girls. They had a string that they were making into one giant cat’s cradle. With their tiny little hands, they plucked at the strands, deftly changing the pattern.
“What are you doing?” Louise knelt beside the little boy that had to be Nikola, wondering what were the names of the three little girls.
“We were bored.” Nikola snuggled into her arms, puppy warm and soft, smelling of baby powder. “So we’re looking to see what we can find.”
The string shimmered between his fingers and she realized it was fiber optics that they were weaving.
“Oh, you have to be careful. People can notice what you’re doing.”
“We’re being careful.” One of the little girls said. It was the same tone and cadence Jillian would have used a few years ago. Full of confidence, not always correct in her assessment of her abilities. “See.” The little girl held up a gleaming web run through her fingers. “This is Flying Monkey Five.”
When Louise peered at it, it was if she was watching footage from a web camera. Tristan sat on a big leather couch that made him look all of six years old. He apparently was multitasking with a tablet balanced on his bare knees and a headset linking him to a bigger screen that held the camera. The soft flickering glow of the television showed he was in a small ultramodern apartment furnished in stark, lean lines. A Power Rangers water bottle and a box of Chinese takeout sat on the coffee table in front of him. He blew a raspberry while considering the information displayed on the big screen. Then, shaking his head, he started to type, muttering, “If it was going to be easy, someone else could do it.”
“There he goes again,” another girl cried. “Dig. Dig. Dig. What is he looking for?”
“You’re spying on him?” Louise cried. “No, no, he’s dangerous!”
“We know!” they said in unison, although some said it with exasperation and others with fear.
“We want to help,” Nikola added. “We can do this.”
“We’ll be careful,” the girls promised in unison.
The babies started to sing then. “Half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle. That’s the way the money goes, Pop! Goes the weasel. Every night I get home, the monkey’s on the table, take a stick and knock it off, Pop! Goes the weasel.”
“No, no, don’t knock him off the table. That will make him mad.”
Louise woke up. By the clock on the nightstand between her bed and Jillian’s, it was 4:26 a.m. She peered at it sleepily while she marveled at how vivid the dream had been. The alarm was set for 5:00 so they could feed Joy before her parents woke up. Should she even try to get to sleep again? The play was on next Wednesday and she hadn’t worked on it much, with Joy, Nikola, and everything taking up her attention. She could spend the half hour making sure she was ready.
She sat up, stretching.
Nikola padded out of the darkness to snuggle into her arms. Unlike her dream, he felt of unyielding metal bones and hydraulic muscles, but at least his fur was the same warm softness. “Don’t worry, it’s just a song. We don’t really knock him off the table.”
She gasped. “You know what I dreamed?”
“Yes.” Nikola seemed to think it was perfectly natural for joint dreams. He pressed closer. “It was nice that you could come and visit us.”
“Do the others have names?”
“We’re discussing possibilities. We think Nikola Tesla Dufae is awesome. We all want great names, but we’re in disagreement as to what is cool.”
Nikola’s use of pronouns was now frightening clear. She had slipped into the idea that he was only one person, but in truth, there were four little people trapped inside one very limited shell. Four lives that were dependent on her and Jillian. And even if they found someone who was willing to act as surrogate mother, there was a chance that only one or two of them would be born.