Dexter is nothing if not a man of his word, and I led them straight to the vending machine for the promised candy bar. But once again they dropped into sullen silence, staring at the vending machine as if it was some kind of torture device. I began to fidget with impatience-another real human emotion, making two of them so far, and I had to say I was not enjoying my transformation to the species. "Come on," I said. "Just pick one."
"But we don't want one," Astor said.
"Would you rather be hungry?" I said.
"Rather have pizza," Cody said softly.
I could feel my jaw beginning to tighten, but I maintained my icy control and said, "Do you see pizza in this vending machine?"
"Mom says that too much candy can make you have diabetes," Astor said.
"And too much pizza makes you have high cholesterol," I said through clenched teeth. "And going hungry is actually good for you, so let's forget the candy bar and go upstairs." I held out my hand to them and half turned toward the elevator. "Come on," I said.
Astor hesitated, mouth half-open, and we stood that way for several long seconds. Then Cody finally said, "Kit Kat," and the spell was broken. I bought Cody his Kit Kat, Astor chose a Three Musketeers, and at last, after what had seemed as long and painful as major surgery, we all got into the elevator and headed upstairs to see Lily Anne.
We made it all the way to Rita's room without a word about pizza or diabetes, which I regarded as a miracle, and in my new human optimism I actually thought we might get through the door and into Lily Anne's presence. But Astor stopped dead just outside the closed door, and Cody trickled to a halt behind her. "What if we don't like her?" Astor said.
I blinked; where does this stuff come from? "How can you not like her?" I said. "She's a beautiful little baby. She's your sister."
"Half sister," Cody said softly.
"Jenny Baumgarten has a little sister and they fight all the time," Astor said.
"You're not going to fight with Lily Anne," I said, appalled at the thought. "She's just a baby."
"I don't like babies," Astor said, a stubborn expression growing on her face.
"You're going to like this one," I said, and even I was surprised at the tone of firm command in my voice. Astor looked at me uncertainly, and then at her brother, and I took advantage of their hesitation and seized the moment. "Come on," I said. "Inside." I put a hand on each one and herded them both through the doorway.
Not much had changed in the tableau; it was still Madonna and Child, with Lily Anne lying on her mother, who held her with one arm. Rita opened her eyes sleepily and smiled as we came in, but Lily Anne simply twitched a little and kept sleeping.
"Come meet your sister," Rita said.
"You both keep saying that," Astor said. She stood there looking peevish until Cody pushed past her and walked over to stand beside the bed. His head was just about level with Lily Anne's, and he studied her for a long moment with apparent interest. Astor finally dribbled over to stand next to him, seemingly more interested in Cody's reaction than in the baby. We all watched as Cody slowly put a finger out toward Lily Anne and very carefully touched her tiny curled-up fist.
"Soft," Cody said, and he stroked her hand gently. Lily Anne opened up her fist and Cody let her grasp his finger. She closed her hand again, holding on to Cody, and wonder of all, Cody smiled.
"She's holding me," he said.
"I wanna try," Astor said, and she tried to get around him to touch the baby.
"Wait your turn," he told her, and she took a half step back and jiggled impatiently until he finally took his finger away from Lily Anne's fist and let Astor have a turn. Astor moved right in to repeat what Cody had done, and she smiled, too, when Lily Anne clutched her finger, and the two of them took turns at this new game for the next fifteen minutes.
And for a whole half hour we didn't hear a single word about pizza.
SIX
It was very enjoyable for me to watch the three children-my three children!-bonding with one another. But of course, any child could have told me that when you are enjoying yourself within sight of a grown-up it is only a matter of time before the fun ends. And Rita, as the only real grown-up in the room, did not let us down. After a short while she looked at the clock and then spoke up. "All right," she said, adding the dreaded words, "it's a school night."
Cody and Astor exchanged another of their eloquent looks, in which no sound was made but a great deal was said. "Mom," Astor said, "we're playing with our new sister." She said it as if it were in quotation marks, so Rita couldn't possibly object. But Rita was an old hand at the game, and she shook her head.
"You can play with Lily Anne more tomorrow," she said. "Right now, Dex-Daddy-has to take you home and put you to bed."
They both looked at me as if I had betrayed them, and I shrugged. "At least there's pizza," I said.
The kids were nearly as reluctant leaving the hospital as they had been going in, but somehow I managed to herd them out the door and into my car. Rather than repeat the horrors of the trip over and reel from the fumes of pizza all across town, I let Astor use my phone to order as we drove, and we had only been home for ten minutes or so when our dinner was delivered. Cody and Astor tore into the pizza as if they hadn't eaten in a month, and I felt lucky to get two small slices without losing an arm.
After we ate we watched TV until bedtime, and then plunged into the familiar rituals of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, and climbing into bed. It was a little bit strange for me to perform the ceremony; I had witnessed it often enough, but Rita had always been the High Priestess of bedtime, and stupidly enough, I felt a little anxious that I might do some part of it wrong. But I kept thinking of what Rita had said in the hospital, when she had verbally stumbled and called me "Dex-Daddy." I truly was Dex-Daddy now, and all this was my turf. Soon I would perform the same rites with Lily Anne, guiding her, and her siblings, through the treacherous shoals of night time and safely into bed, and I found this an oddly comforting thought. In fact, it sustained me all the way up to the time when I finally had Cody and Astor tucked in and I reached for the light switch.
"Hey," Astor said. "You forgot prayers."
I blinked, suddenly very uncomfortable. "I don't know any prayers."
"You don't have to say it," she said. "Just listen."
I suppose that anyone with even a little bit of self-awareness will eventually feel like a complete hypocrite in the company of children, and this was my time. But I sat down with a very solemn face and listened to the singsong nonsense they recited every night. I was reasonably sure they didn't believe any of it any more than I did, but it was part of the procedure, and therefore it had to be done, and we all felt better when it was over with.
"All right," I said, standing up and turning off the light. "Good night."
"Good night, Dexter," Astor said.
"Night," Cody said softly.
In the normal course of things, I would probably sit down on the couch with Rita and watch another hour of television, just for the sake of disguise maintenance; but tonight there was no need to subject myself to the ordeal of pretending the programs were funny or interesting, so I didn't return to the living room. Instead, I went down the hall to the small room that Rita called my study. I had used it mostly for research connected to my hobby. There was a computer for me to track down those special individuals who deserved my attention, and there was a small closet where I could store a few harmless items like duct tape and fifty-pound-test fishing line.
There was also a small filing cabinet, which I kept locked, that contained a few folders holding notes on prospective playmates, and I sat at my little desk and opened this up. There wasn't a great deal there at the moment. I had two possibilities, but due to the press of events I had not really pursued either of them, and now I wondered if I ever would. I opened a folder and looked inside. There was a murderous pedophile who had twice been released because of a convenient alibi. I was fairly sure I could break the alibi and prove his guilt-not in the legal sense, of course, but enough to satisfy the strict standards my cop adoptive father, Harry, had poured into me. And there was a club in South Beach that was listed as the last place where several people had been seen before disappearing. Fang, it was called, a truly stupid name for a club. But in addition to the missing-persons reports, the club had turned up in a few INS documents. Apparently, they had an alarmingly high rate of turnover in their kitchen staff, and someone at INS suspected the dishwashers were not all running home to Mexico because the Miami water tasted wrong.