He and his daughter have on matching Bexter Academy sweatshirts, Penny’s inside out, and plaid flannel pants. His salt-and-pepper hair, more pepper, is rumpled as usual. Tortoiseshell glasses. Even after more than a year together, I still think “Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch” every time I see him. And now, his verging-on-smoldering expression makes me pleased I packed the slinky nightgown.
“I knew you were getting married,” Penny says, swatting her father’s hand away. “That’s no biggie of a secret. Charlie Mac had a toothbrush at our house. Annie says when there’s a toothbrush, that’s serious. My mother had a toothbrush at Elliot’s house before they got married. I saw it. Annie says-”
“Was it your mother who agreed to the pierced ears?” Josh interrupts. Teasing. “I thought you two agreed to wait until you were sixteen.”
Penny puts down her glass and crosses her spindly arms in front of her, still brown and freckled from the Florida sun. She rolls her eyes, impatient, then settles her face into a parent-weary look. “Daddo, you know about Bexter. When Mom told me about that, that’s when she told me I could get pierced ears. Annie says pierced ears are cool. Charlie Mac, you know about it, right?”
Yes. I do. And that’s my own Reality World. Penny’s doctor-mom, Victoria, and her doctor-husband Elliott snagged some high-security medical center research grant in Los Angeles. Just for “a while,” she told her ex-husband, it was no kids allowed. As a result, Josh is getting a full-time daughter. For “a while” at least, Penny lives with her dad and goes to Bexter. Entering midterm, and, courtesy of her professor-father, tuition free.
“Of course, honey,” I reply. “And Bexter is-”
But Penny’s not listening.
“I’m not gonna die from one little taste,” she says, hoisting the green champagne bottle, dripping with melted ice, out of the silver bucket. “Annie says she had champagne when her brother graduated Bexter. The real stuff. And so did all the kids at the party. She says everyone’s parents let them do it.”
“If Annie says you should jump off a bridge, would you also do that?” Josh guides the bottle back into the bucket. “How about…”
Taking a sip from my own glass, I watch their playful battle, and mull over our looming future. Sooner or later, we’ll set a date. Sooner or later, I’ll sell my condo. We’ll decide whose coffeemaker we keep, whose set of silverware, whose toaster oven. Divide the closets and the medicine cabinets. Learn to schedule shower times. I’ll be a full-time reporter, full-time professor’s wife and full-time stepmother.
A yowl arises from near the living room couch. A wail, laden with despair. Botox refused to exit her once-loathed cat carrier when I opened the latticed door, and has now plastered her body to the back wall of the plastic box. Apparently this is an announcement that she’s going to stay inside it. Forever. Botox hates transition.
“What’s wrong with Botox?” Penny asks. Her face twists with concern. Champagne wars forgotten, she runs to the carrier, crouching in front of it, peering inside.
I link my fingers through Josh’s, leaning into his shoulder, and raise a headache-risking third glass of Veuve. My ring reflects the candlelight, and in the tiny glittering flash I’m hit with my new reality.
“Your new family,” I say. I hear my own voice turn husky. It’s not from the champagne. “You like it?”
“I do,” Josh replies. He looks down at me, then squares my shoulders and stares into my eyes.
“Sweetheart?” He looks perplexed. “Are you crying?”
The nightgown was a major success. But I still can’t sleep. Brookline’s old-fashioned streetlights weave crisscross patterns on Josh’s bedroom ceiling, stripes of shadow across the stark white. They’re now as familiar as my own ceiling design, Beacon Hill’s gas-lit yellow cast across the pale blue I painted myself. It’s been home for a long time. Now I sleep here as much as there. And I’m feeling just as comfortable. Almost. After so many years on my own, what will it be like to share everything?
I wrap Josh’s burgundy-striped down comforter closer and struggle to quiet my thoughts. I can make out the silver-framed photos and diplomas on the walls, key rings and loose change on Josh’s imposing walnut dresser. I like his dresser better than mine. Will I get half the drawers? His books and old skiing trophies already crowd the built-in shelves. Will there be room for my books? Go to sleep, I silently chant. Go to sleep. Tomorrow, actually today, is a workday. And Franklin and I have to get started on the car-recall investigation. Lots to do. Too much to do. I close my eyes.
“Sweets?” Josh whispers. “You asleep?”
“Not one bit,” I say. “I’m trying, but not terribly successfully. My brain won’t turn off. Nor will the rest of me, thanks to you.”
I move to face him, eyes open again, smiling with possibility, glad for a good excuse to be awake. I’ll just be tired tomorrow-today. It’s happened before. And it’s not every night your engagement goes public. I expect Josh to reach out for me, but his expression is-concerned? And why are his glasses back on? My Josh-radar pings into the red.
“What?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”
“Can you keep a secret?” he says. He’s still on his back, hands clasped over his chest, head turned to watch me.
I sit up, yanking the comforter over me, and twist around to look down on him, assessing. I hate secrets. The reporter half of my brain is pitching out disaster scenarios faster than I can bat them away.
Can I keep a secret? What kind of a question is that?
“Um, keeping a secret, that’s the reporter’s credo, right?” I smile, trying for adorable-cheerful. Maybe I’ve misread his mood. I squint at the digital alarm clock. It’s hard to be perceptive at 3:34 a.m. “Confidential sources stay confidential? And hey, I didn’t call Maysie to tell her about the engagement, how about that? If I can keep our news from my own best friend?”
Josh isn’t laughing. He scoots up, back to headboard, grabbing his half of the comforter. “It’s Bexter,” he says. He leans over, gives me a quick kiss. “I’m sorry, sweets, to be distracted. Tonight, especially. But you know Dorothy Wirt? The Head’s assistant?”
I nod. Josh tells me she’s such a snoop, he secretly calls her Miss Marple. Gray hair, cardigans with brooch. A mental pack rat. Organized as a dictionary.
“Well, the Head and I found her at her desk a few days ago. Crying.” He blinks, remembering.
“She was in tears. Inconsolable. It took a lot of convincing, but she finally told us she’s been getting some pretty disturbing phone calls. She didn’t want to tell, she insisted, didn’t want to ‘alarm’ the Head. I mean, I think it’s more alarming that she tried to keep it to herself.”
Josh holds up a hand. Stopping his own story.
“She may have a point,” he says, sighing. “It could be the first of this year’s Bexter senior pranks. But Dorothy told us someone called Bexter and, using an obviously disguised voice, asked, ‘Do you know where your children are?’ That must be a student. It’s so ridiculous. Clichéd. Right from some made-for-TV movie. Maybe it’s nothing.”
“I don’t know, Josh,” I say, mulling it over. My sleep-deprived brain is beginning to churn. It’s clearly not nothing. “All those Bexter students with rich and famous parents. Doesn’t Headmaster Forrestal want to call in the police? Even the FBI? Isn’t there caller ID? A pattern to the calls? To the timing? What about the parents?”
Now I’m wide-awake. Penny. Bexter. “And hey-I’m a parent. Or will be, soon. And you are, too.”
“Nope. Nothing.” His hands smooth the comforter in front of him. Again. And again.
I’m confused. “Nothing what?”
“No pattern. No caller ID. Sometimes there’s no one on the line at all, Dorothy says. The number is blocked so it doesn’t come up on caller ID. And no to the cops, too. The Head is insisting. He says, since there are no specifics, there’s nothing to investigate. ‘It’s not like it’s a bomb threat.’ In that voice of his.” He raises his eyebrows, miming an aloof demeanor.