“I’ll be repainting it soon. Brown, I’m thinking.”
“Brown?” Bram muses. “We might have to take it to a committee. Lilly and Jack would probably vote for—”
“Green with purple polka dots,” I finish for him, and his left brow hikes with amusement. With Bram everything is an inside joke. We take a bit of perverse pleasure in knowing why it’s so important we meld seamlessly into our new world. We overcame our extraordinary odds, fought like hell, and now we are a normal, such a horribly normal and boring family. A dentist and a housewife. We love to sell it as much as we love the illusion.
“No way!” Tessa protests while fanning her arms over the startling color. “I love the red. It has to stay.” Her theatrics alone are worthy of leaving it be for a lifetime. “Isn’t that right?” She looks past me as Bridget joins us.
Bridget’s eyes flit to Bram, her tongue does a quick revolution over her lips, a subconscious primal cry for him to impregnate her. I’ve convinced myself that on a fundamental level, women of childbearing years would love to sleep with my husband. Bram must sense this, too, because he steps in close and slips his arm around my waist. He’s been claimed, and he’s not looking to explore his options.
“Red? Really?” Bridget’s fingers tap over her lips as she beats her fingernails against her teeth. “They say red is a color that insecure people use to disguise the fact they have no power.” Her lips twitch just shy of a smile as she flits those dark, soulless eyes my way. “But you bought it that way, right? I mean, you didn’t deliberately choose the color.”
The doorbell rings, and I make a move for it without hesitating. For a brief moment, I’m wishing it were Bridget I had discovered with her neck the size of a thimble. The police still haven’t released any information on thebodyas they so coldly referred to the poor girl I had the misfortune to discover.
I swing the door open to find a pert Amazonian blonde, skintight jeans, crop top, just-ate-the-canary grin on her face, Astrid. Tucked in her arm is an enormous chicken, a majestic beast whose plumage actually stuns with its long onyx-colored feathers. Its beady eyes and frenetic head jabs, letting me know it doesn’t want to be here anymore than I do at the moment. I spot Astrid’s kids running around through the back gate, most likely not wanting any association with the lunatic before me.
“You’ve brought a guest,” I say in my brightest voice, widening the door to let her know undeniably that poultry is allowed. I’m the cool mom who lets this shit fly. Can’t wait to see Dawson’s reaction. I’m sure he’ll be spitting out feathers for a week.
No sooner does Astrid strut her tiny frame into the foyer than Tessa bounds over and embraces both the bird and the bitch. “You’ve brought Rocky!” She does a little dance, cooing and oohing at the frightened beast, and it gives an alarmed flapping of the wings.
“Oh, hush you.” Astrid tightens her grip over the poor thing as she looks to Bram. Something cinches in me when she does it. Don’t think it’s gone unnoticed that each time we’re together she pretends I’m a part of the furniture and treats my husband like a single father. “I hope you don’t mind the early wake-up call. I’m trying to get rid of the rooster, honest I am, but I can’t seem to place him in a decent home. I’ve got a flock of fourteen right now and more baby chicks on the way. My animals are my family. The kids know I love my feathered friends best.” She belts out an awkward guffaw.
Bram and I exchange a sharp look. So she’s the culprit with the damn birds who love to rouse us as soon as the sun hits the horizon. We gift a knowing nod to one another, always on the same page.
See? I want to say to those around us all too eager to drop their panties for my husband. We are a united front. Our bond is unbreakable.
“We don’t mind a bit.” Bram does an odd little hop backwards. He has never been a good liar. “I think I’d better ring the bell and get those kids eating before the food goes cold. You ladies, too. Chop, chop,” he chides before disappearing, and both Bridget and Astrid give a schoolgirl giggle.
“So, Ree.” Astrid leans in with her elf-like features zooming in a little too close for my liking, her pecking friend, jutting its own head out toward me as if pleading for assistance. “Rumor has it, you touched the corpse. You tried to revive her yourself. That’s quite heroic. Was it someone you knew?”
I inch back a bit. “No. Actually, I don’t know who she was. But I can assure you I never tried to revive her. I felt the floor. I thought it was paint, but it wasn’t. It was—”
Astrid pushes me to the side in a violent fit as she takes a step toward the dining room. “What the hell?” Her eyes are agog at the streams of miniature hands all snapping up food off the buffet table at once. The bounce house sits deflated out back, slouching over itself like a tired old man. I’m guessing unplugging it was Bram’s sneaky way to get the kids to take a break and eat. I spot him outside, cornered by a petite redhead, her hand petting his arm every other second as if comforting him.
“Don’t worry. We have enough food to feed an army,” I insist. “In fact, if you want to get started yourselves, I can have the Chinese chicken salad brought to the living room.Lena!” I give a shout to my sister but am met with silence on that front. Lena’s sequestered herself in the kitchen, and it doesn’t look as if she’s coming out.
“Holy shit.” Astrid staggers into the dining room as if I’ve chopped up a body and fed it to the miniature masses.
Tessa’s eyes grow wild as she inspects the scene. “Crap.” She stomps on over, and both Bridget and I follow like a couple of lost puppies.
Astrid yanks a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right out of some poor boy’s mouth and screams at the children to get back outside.
“Are you trying to kill us?” she riots while nailing me in the face with the unfinished sandwich. “Bridget, get out there and take that shit away from them. Hose down their hands. Nobody touches anything. I want everyone the hell off the property in five.” Her eyes meet with mine, furious and dangerous. “You do not feed a group of children peanut butter under any fucking circumstance. Do you hear me? One sniff of that shit can send anyone even remotely allergic straight to the ER. I am damned glad I brought my EpiPen.”
Tessa steps in. “Okay, calm down. We’ve got the kids taken care of. Brian across the street is a pediatrician.” She looks to me and nods, as clearly that bit of info was for me. “I’ll have him give everyone the once-over. And I’m sorry, Ree. She’s right. We’ve got a hell of a lot of allergies this year, and we’ll be lucky if we don’t end up with another corpse on our hands today. My God, it would be a child.” She looks to the ceiling. “You don’t want that. You do not want to know how it feels to have a child’s corpse haunting you.”
“No, of course not.” My heart throbs in my throat, and my veins pulse with heated adrenaline. I’ve sweated right through my clothes, and the air feels steely against my skin. I’m ripe with embarrassment that poor Lena has to witness the event, even if she is cowering in the corner, snickering away, saving all of her best lines for later, and I’m sure I will hear them. But Tessa is wrong. I know exactly how it feels to have a child’s corpse haunting you. In fact, I know what it feels like to have two.
Astrid spots the bucket full of chicken legs spiking out of their cylinder-shaped home as if taunting her, and she seizes, causing her ridiculous bird to let out an ear-splitting squawk. She lets out an arduous cry herself before sneering at me and stalking out to the back.
“I’d better help get the kids to safety.” Tessa helps her usher the children single file through the rear gate swiftly as if the backyard were suddenly on fire.
I head out, only to meet with Bram, his arms folded tightly, his pale green eyes penetrating me with a mixture of disappointment and heartbreak. The veins in his neck bulge, a silent rage just the way Simone had pegged him, and I quickly sweep his poor dead wife out of my mind. We are trying too hard. I shake my head at him, and he shrugs back.
We plug in the bounce house and join the kids. Lilly and Jack laugh and scream. They don’t even notice the other kids are missing. Lena comes in and sits in the corner, enjoying the ride we afford her. Bram holds my hand, pulls me in, and steals a kiss. He whispersI love youstraight into my ear, and it almost feels as if it’s going to be all right.
That night I scan my emails before bedtime. Twelve new messages. Almost all of them far kinder than expected.Sorry things turned out that way! I’m sure that will never happen again. I hope the kids will be at Willy’s party next week—we’re having an insect zoo! Ricky and Ann had a good time anyway!
Tessa sent one that readDon’t tell anyone, but I still buy peanut butter. Next time you’re in my neck of the woods, pop over and we’ll share a sandwich in secret.
