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Jack felt his chin rise slightly at this.

“And it wouldn’t be twins,” Jules added. “There’s four of you, so it would be quadruplets.”

“Right,” said Jack. “I knew that.”

Martha never came back to school after that, and eventually the voting and interest in the twins stopped, but the You Again family had grown by one sister.

• • •

The heavy glass front doors of the office swung closed behind Jack, shutting out a muggy spring morning heaving with allergens he hadn’t previously been aware of. In his old body, Jack typically avoided spicy foods and dairy to prevent an evening on the toilet, but otherwise he was able to handle most of life without consequence. In Margaret’s skin, though, he quickly realized that sometimes air could make your nose stuffy. The idea of newfound allergies hadn’t even occurred to him until the late spring pollen began tickling his sinuses, and suddenly he found himself very grateful he hadn’t learned this lesson after munching on peanut butter or shellfish.

The Eagle watched Jack walk past his desk like he’d spotted an elephant on safari. Jack plopped his laptop down and tried to shake the feeling of eyes on his back with a tight shoulder shrug. He needed to talk to Brenda, but he’d have to wait out the attention of his neighbor. As much as Margaret and Brenda seemed to be friends, and a workday visit might not seem out of the ordinary, he didn’t want to rouse any suspicion just in case. Someone in this office had a secret to protect, and they might have allies.

He rifled through the two files left for him that morning, putting on a show of deep interest in the details of a bludgeoning case slated for pickup just after lunch. After what felt like an appropriate amount of time had passed for a pee to brew in an elderly bladder, Jack got up and made as if he was walking toward the bathroom before changing directions just out of view of his row of cubicles and knocking on Brenda’s office door instead.

Last time, Brenda had said Greta Summers was terrifying, which meant they’d met, which meant she might have information about her that could be useful. It also meant she’d be able to recognize her as an interloper and confirm Jack’s theory. Of course, he couldn’t exactly ask her outright. He needed to get that information in a subtle way. A way that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. A way that felt natural to Margaret and Brenda’s existing dynamic. It seemed a safer option than confronting Greta herself, who didn’t seem keen to talk under the best of circumstances. All he had to do was approach this the way he’d approached gossip growing up. He’d seen Greer do it a thousand times. It seemed easy enough.

“Bren!” Jack swung the door open with a flourish and pranced inside as gracefully as his creaking bones would allow. “Hey, girlie. What’s the hot goss?”

Brenda looked up from her paperwork with a blank expression. She pushed her glasses lower on her nose bridge and blinked up at Jack in what he realized was growing concern. “Margie? You okay, hun?”

He slipped into the seat across from her and tried again. “Yes, thanks, doll. I’m great. It’s just been a while since we’ve had a proper gossip.”

Brenda leaned in over the desk. “You’ve got something juicy for me?”

“Oh,” said Jack. “Uh. Yeah. Did you hear they had to get exterminators into the archives? Roaches, apparently. Poor Gerard dies and now this.”

“Roaches!” Brenda shuddered. “Gosh, tell me they got them all. If any make it up here, I’ll end up on the collection roster myself.”

“Uh-huh,” said Jack. “So the archives, huh? Always something going on down there. Like, have you met the new archivist?”

Brenda shook her head. “I don’t get down there much, I’m afraid. I’m actually surprised to hear you’ve been lately. Agents really only use it for particularly difficult cases, in my experience.”

“Right,” said Jack. “Sure. I had a real humdinger last week.”

“Which one?” Brenda’s concern returned, this time not for Margaret’s well-being, it seemed, but for her job. Which made sense. If Jack had actually had a particularly hard case, he’d have been expected to talk it over with his superior, who happened to be Brenda. And if he didn’t talk it over with her, then at the very least, any challenges would have been reflected in his report, which she would have read. But, of course, she didn’t, because, of course, there hadn’t been any challenges to report.

He could lie to her, say he’d had a tricky case but was able to figure it out in the end and didn’t want to trouble Brenda with anything to worry about, even in the report. But admitting to withholding information in his paperwork could get him into proper trouble, which was the very thing he’d always done his best to avoid. He could try to convince her there had been a report about a case warranting a trip to the archives, but something told him Brenda was too thorough to be tricked into believing she was the one who’d dropped the ball here. He racked his brain for every pickup he’d had the previous week on the off chance any of them actually had given him any trouble, but by that point the silence had begun to seep across the desk between them and Brenda was readjusting her glasses at an increasingly alarming rate.

Finally Jack decided to open his mouth and commit to whatever half-baked story came out of it, but the first sound to fill the room was that of a knock. For a very brief moment Jack found himself wondering how he’d managed to make the noise, but then the door opened and a man in his midthirties with slick brown hair poked his head into the office.

“Whoops, sorry, didn’t realize you had company,” said the man. “Just wanted to drop you these.” He emerged from the doorway in a black puffer vest and beige chinos, crossed the little gray room, and placed a small bag of saltwater taffy on Brenda’s desk. There was something familiar in his clean-shaven face, but Jack couldn’t place it. “I’ll leave you to it.” The man gave a wink and left the office just as quickly as he’d come, an expensive aftershave clinging to the air in his wake.

“Goodness me,” said Brenda, when the door was closed again. “I seem to have forgotten where we were.”

For that alone, and a little bit for the intoxicating aftershave, Jack could have kissed the man. He abandoned his attempts at an explanation for his archival forays, taking full advantage of Brenda’s swoon to pivot the conversation anywhere but where it had been.

“Who was that?”

Brenda recovered and returned her attention to Jack. “Did you see that tush?” She gave her neck a small fan with her hand. “That, my dear Margaret, was Ian Grant.”

Jack’s handwritten list of higher-ups flashed through his mind. “As in one of our directors?”

Brenda gave a nod and ripped into her saltwater taffy, offering the selection to Jack. He took a piece, forgetting the partial dentures he currently rocked, and quickly regretted his decision.

“Nice of him to bring you these,” Jack said as he tried to readjust the dentures with his tongue.

“Oh, he’s the best.”