“Yeah?”
“Do you think by the time this kid is twenty, we’ll finally have those flying cars the Jetsons promised?”
I laugh, a real, full-bellied sound that feels loud in the quiet room. “Knowing our luck, we’ll still be untangling twenty-foot phone cords from around the kitchen chairs, babe.”
“Ugh, don’t manifest that, Annie,” she says, flopping back against the pillows. “If I’m going to be a mother in the space age, I at least want a robot that folds the laundry. If we can put a man on the moon, surely someone can invent a machine that knows how to fold a fitted sheet!”
“I’ll put in a request with the universe,” I promise, heading toward the kitchen as the first real light of the morning begins to crawl over the skyline. “Coffee or tea?”
“Coffee,” she calls out. “Lots of it. I think I need to be fully caffeinated before I tell Marcus.”
Chapter 13
ANNIE
“Why the fuck are we doing this again?”
Cori is hunched over a puddle of shimmery purple spandex like she’s performing open-heart surgery on a Muppet. She winces, squinting at a seam. I can hear the rhythmicthrum-thrum-thrumof the sewing machine under my palms, a vibration that travels all the way up my elbows as I guide a river of teal sequins under the needle, my tongue poked out just a fraction because if this line isn’t straight, the scales are going to look more ‘molting fish’ than ‘magical sea-creature.’
“Because,” I say, not daring to look up even though my neck is starting to ache. “Emma deserves a Halloween costume that doesn’t involve her father panic-buying a plastic smock at Party City on October thirtieth. He was literally going to buy her something with the character’s face printed on the chest, Cori. I couldn’t let it happen.”
“Right. God forbid.” Cori jabs her needle through the purple fabric, then winces, probably pricking her finger. “And here I thought it’s because you were trying to impress her hot father.”
I don’t even flinch. I’m a professional. “And because you love me. Don’t forget that part.”
“Yeah, yeah. For you. And the children. Mostly the glitter-obsessed children.”
Outside, the Manhattan sky is a flat, indecisive gray. The temperature plummeted overnight—proper coat weather, finally. It’s technically my day off. I could be a normal human. I could be nursing a latte in Central Park or at the matinee or staring at a painting at the Met. Instead, I am slowly becoming one with the sequins. By the time I’m done, I’ll be exfoliating glitter out of my pores until New Year’s.
Leo had been the one to break the news. He’d reached his breaking point with the red wigs and the clamshell bras after two consecutive years of Emma being Ariel for Halloween.They’d compromised—she could be a mermaid, but she had to mix it up.
“How am I supposed to find a costume for a hybrid sea-feline?” Leo had asked me, leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen, looking genuinely distressed. He had that little crease between his eyebrows—the one that makes me want to reach out and smooth it over with my thumb, which is a very ‘just the nanny’ thought to have.
“You aren’t,” I’d told him, already sketching ears on my grocery receipt. “Leave it to me.”
“Annie—”
“I said leave it to me.”
He’d agreed, probably because he had no other viable options.
I grew up in a house where everything came in a Neiman Marcus shopping bag, but it was Eileen who gave me the real keys to the kingdom. She used to sit me down in the sunroom when I was seven, ignoring my pouting while she made me stitch straight lines until my fingers cramped.
“You should know how to make your own clothes, Annie,” she’d say, the words punctuated by the snip of her shears or the clack of her knitting needles. “You’ll feel more confident in the clothes you make yourself than in anything else, I promise.”
She was right. I love it—the way a flat, lifeless bolt of fabric becomes a shape, a mood, a reason to walk a little taller. Most of my favorite pieces came from my own two hands. The floral midi skirt that makes me feel like I’m in a Mazzy Star music video? Made it. The black slip dress that makes me feel like I could give Kate Moss a run for her money? Made it. I even made my own high-waisted trousers—the ones that actually made Marcus Silva stop mid-sentence, and he doesn’t offer empty flattery; to Marcus, a compliment on your clothes is a rare, hard-earned certification of quality. So when he paused, tilted his head, and asked, “Where did you find those?” with that sharp, genuine curiosity in his eyes—well, I lived off that high for at least a month.
If I can meet the standards of a man who views a perfectly draped silhouette as a moral imperative, I can certainly handle a glitter cat mermaid.
I guide the final inch of teal under the foot, the machine giving a satisfied little snip. I hold up the tail, the sequins catching the gray afternoon light and shattering it into a thousand tiny dancing diamonds across the living room.
“Look at that,” I whisper, feeling that spark ofI-made-thispride. It’s beautiful. It’s ridiculous, and it’s beautiful.
Cori looks up, her eyes softening despite her best efforts to remain a grumpy sewing assistant. “Okay, fine. It’s magnificent. Emma’s going to lose her mind.”
I can picture it already—Emma’s face when she sees this thing. Her eyes going wide, her little squeal she does when she’s genuinely surprised by something. She’s going to want to sleep in this thing, and I’m going to have to explain that sequins are essentially tiny plastic knives when they’re pressed against your skin at 2 AM.
The costume itself is a feat of engineering I’m frankly proud of and deserves its own wing at the Met. The tail is teal sequinsthat fade to purple at the fins, with enough give in the hem that Emma can actually walk in it—none of that deranged-penguin-shuffling that usually plagues the mermaid community. Cori’s been working on the purple velvet bolero jacket—cat-themed, with little paw prints I stenciled on in silver fabric paint. I sewed cat ears onto a headband last night, covering them in the same teal sequins as the tail, with pink felt for the insides. The whole thing is held together by a bodysuit I found at a thrift store on Bleecker—black, long-sleeved, perfect for October weather—that I’ve covered in strategically placed patches of iridescent glitter that, in the right light, look like scales.
