“Nico told Seven that snitches get stitches?” Atticus said, looking at Jericho with a smug expression. “I told you taking them to the garage every day so Ever could watch them was going to end up being a problem. But no, you said private schoolwould teach them to be elitist pric—brats,” he corrected as Jett, Jagger and the girls turned to him with big eyes.
“And I stand by that,” Jericho said. “Look at you and your brothers. Snobs, every one of you.”
Atticus scoffed. “Your brother is wearing a crop top that costs more than our mortgage payment. In the city. ”
Felix preened. “It’s my job to look fashionable. Nobody wants to buy clothes made by someone wearing—” he shuddered— “chinos.”
“Those boys are delinquents,” Atticus said, wagging his finger like the know-it-all he was.
“Yeah, well they’re our delinquents,” Jericho told him. “No take backs. When you married me, you married the muppets. For better or worse, Freckles. Besides, they’re right. Snitches do get stitches.” To the kids, he said, “First rule of the Mulvaney family?”
“We don’t talk about the Mulvaney family!” they all shouted as one.
Allister clapped his chubby baby hands from where he stood in his playpen. “Yeah,” he added in his shrill baby voice, then clapped some more. Yeah was his new favorite word.
Lucas still had hopes for his youngest. So far, he’d shown no signs of psychopathy or psychometry. He was just a sweet, normal, slightly neurotic two-year-old.
The neurosis wasn’t his fault though. Adelyn and Arabella acted as though he was their baby, carting him around the playroom, dressing him up in their doll clothes, forcing him to attend tea parties he had never RSVP’d to. It would make any toddler jumpy.
They did the same thing whenever West, Oscar or Theo were in the nursery. They just loved babies. They were very sweet girls. They truly were.
His gaze dragged to the doll on the ground, dread pooling in his stomach.
He hoped.
Thomas pushed his way through the family, stopping short when he saw the doll. “What happened here?” he asked, frowning.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” August said, without looking back at his father.
Thomas hunkered down, taking in the crime scene. The bedraggled soaking wet doll, the wet washcloth over her face, the red plastic beach bucket half full of pool water.“Did they?—”
“Waterboard their Cabbage Patch doll?’ August said. “Yeah, yeah, they did. We’re just trying to figure out who taught them to do that.”
“Who knew the cabbage fields were so dangerous,” Adam quipped, earning another slap from Noah. “Stop doing that,” he said, rubbing the spot.
“Then stop saying stupid things,” Noah shot back.
“I think you’re aiming too high,” Felix muttered.
“Stop saying unhelpful things,” Noah corrected.
“Better,” Zane said.
Lucas narrowed his eyes, doing a mental headcount. “Where are the twins?”
“Which ones?” Zane asked. “We’re up to three sets. We pop out identical twins at a statistically improbable rate considering how none of the parents are related.”
“Twin genes are passed by the mother anyway,” August said, earning a glare from Lucas. “What? You can’t expect someone to say the word statistics and me not to interject. It’s…impossible.”
That was hardly the point.
To Zane and Felix, Lucas said, “Where are your husbands? This has the murder twins' names written all over it.”
“Asa! Avi,” Zane shouted, shifting West’s weight from his left hip to his right. “Where are you? Lucas is right. This is so you.”
The twins exited the house in their Gemini swim trunks and matching ugly Hawaiian shirts that neither had bothered to button. They carried trays full of raw meat to the grill, looking at them all curiously before gingerly setting down the food.
When Asa saw Zane’s livid expression, he blanched. “What? What did I do?” To Avi, he said, “What did I do? I was in the house the whole time?”
