One of the kids across the room gave a fake snore.
“I need a drink!” a peeping voice called.
“I have to pee!”
“I live in a pineapple under the sea!”
Giggles erupted.
“It’s sleepy time, everyone!” A quiet form had come up behind Clarice and spoke gently now: Cherry, the owner of the day care. “Do you want me to tell you a story?”
There was a chorus of agreement.
“You have to lie down, then, and close your eyes, and image yourself in a green field of grass.”
“Are there SPIDERS?” Gil wanted to know. Bruno shushed him.
“There can be spiders only if you invite them,” Cherry said. “They can be your friends, if you want. Because this is a story about friends, but they don’t know that yet…”
Bruno got up and drew Clarice out of the doorway as Cherry settled into a rocking chair and began to quietly tell a story about a cricket and a crow who saw the field in a very different way. For one, the field was a short green carpet, for the other a tall forest of grass blades.
Clarice wanted to stay and hear the rest of the story, but Noah was suddenly looming in the hall before them, holding two suitcases—one of them very familiar. “We brought a selection of your things,” he said gruffly.
“You went to my apartment? You went through mystuff?Did you meet my cat?” Horatio was probably really pissed that Clarice hadn’t come home on time to feed him.
Noah showed off scratches across the back of his hand. “An admirable defender of your space,” he said, as if he was genuinely impressed. “I filled his food dish, topped off his water, and scooped his litter.”
Clarice was a little less mad that he’d rummaged through her things, knowing what he’d gone through.
“Did you find my spare glasses, I hope?” Bruno breathed a sigh of relief when Noah handed them over from a shirt pocket. “I feel like I’ve been walking around in a fog. It’s unnerving.”
“Your room is this way.” Noah led them down the hallway to a small bedroom with one queen bed taking most of the space.
“Oh,” Clarice said, realizing that he’d carried both of the suitcases in there on purpose. “I guess we’re bunkmates.”
There was no time to analyze the only one bed situation she was now in, because Noah had a familiar binder in his hands. “We’ll need you to explain this, Ms. Turner.”
39
BRUNO
“What is that?” Bruno asked, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Clarice’s look of guilt told him more than instinct did.
“This way,” Noah said shortly, leading them back down the hallway to where everyone was crammed into the living room, packed tightly on couches, spread out on the floor, or on chairs dragged in from the dining room.
Darius was vehemently protesting being sent to the kid’s room. “Oh my God, Dad, do I have to? Can’t I sleep out here? I’ve got my earbuds. I won’t hear any of the secret agent action hero stuff. How about outside, or in the garage? It’s not that cold. I could sleep in a car.”
Theo was frowning at Darius. “It would make everyone feel a lot better if there was someone responsible in there with them all night. I know, it’s asking a lot?—”
“FINE.” Darius did a patented teenaged slouch down the hall with his sleeping bag, managing to look like a sullen martyr. “Not like I have my own life or anything anyway.”
“It’s DELIRIOUS!” Gil’s shrill voice greeted him fromdown the hallway. There was a shriek that might have been a bird or a baby.
“Shove over, kid, I’m yournight nanny, apparently.”
The door shut behind him, muffling the pleasant drone of Cherry’s ongoing story. Several of the adults chuckled.
Noah gave the binder to Juliette, who flipped through it with a frown. “You’ve certainly been industrious, Ms. Turner.”
