Chapter 17

TRYING TO KEEP her balance amid the swirl of kids and motion in the bright, warm apartment, Emily Parker sipped her wine and smiled.

Incredible, she thought. All these children. So many races. They had to be adopted, right? At least some of them did. And was there a Mrs. Bennett? She’d definitely gotten single vibes off Mike.

She watched as Mike knelt down and lifted up the seven-year-old black boy and softly judo-flipped him over his shoulder onto the couch next to an Asian girl.

She certainly hadn’t expected this.

“Hey!” one of the kids yelled. “Check it out!”

On the TV screen, Emily and Mike were on the sidewalk in front of the Bronx building. The coverage of the kidnapping had already begun.

The children all started clapping. One of the tween girls put her pinkies in her mouth and whistled like a doorman hailing a taxi. Emily chuckled as she watched Bennett take an elaborate bow.

“Thank you, everyone. No autographs, please. Enough fame for now, it’s time to eat!”

And the dinner, Emily thought as they finally sat, looked incredible. One of the hugest dining room tables she’d ever seen, and set with china, no less. How did they manage that? Looking at the faces of the kids finding their seats, she thought of herself and Olivia eating Lean Cuisines at the kitchen island in her silent town house. Could this be more different?

They all folded their hands together and closed their eyes as the priest led them in saying grace.

“Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty through Christ our Lord, amen,” the sweet old man said. “Now pass the gravy!”

She didn’t just see that, did she? The setting looked like a lost cover of The Saturday Evening Post, only it was real. The only time she ever had a home-cooked meal like this was on Thanksgiving at her dad’s house.

The last thing Emily had expected when she was called on special assignment this afternoon was that she’d be eating dinner with some crazy, enormous, happy family. She couldn’t wait to call her daughter and tell her all about them.

She shook her head as she caught Mike’s eye at the head of the table.

“And a cat, too?” she said.

“Ah, he’s just another loafer,” Mike said. “Like the priest.”

Chapter 18

AFTER WE ATE, all the kids lined up to say good night to Emily.

“It was indeed a pleasure to meet you,” Trent said, still hamming it up. “And good night, Father. Do sleep well.”

“Oh,” I said, tickling him hard enough to make him squeal. “Do sleep well yourself, Sir Hamlet.”

When we were finally alone, I poured Emily the last of the wine and gave her the short version of my life story. I told her about Maeve, my wife. How we’d adopted our kids, one by one, until we turned around one day and saw that we had ten. I even told her how my wife had passed away. How Mary Catherine and Seamus and I struggled to keep the wheels from falling off.

“But enough about me,” I said, getting that off my chest. “Fair’s fair. It’s time for you to give me the vitals on Emily Parker.”

“There’s not much. I have one daughter. Olivia,” she said, taking a picture out of her bag.

“A cutie,” I said, leaning in close to Emily to see the picture. Like her mother, I almost said. It was amazing how comfortable this was starting to feel.

“How old is she?” I said instead.

“Four.”

“The only age we don’t have in this house,” I said. “What are the odds?”

Mary Catherine came in with two plates and caught us laughing.

“Mary, that isn’t what I think it is, is it? Apple pie?” Emily said.

Mary Catherine dropped the plates loudly on the table.

“I left the stove on,” she said, quickly turning around. “Will that be all tonight, Mr. Bennett?”

“Sure… that’s fine, Mary,” I said, a little confused.

When the kitchen door closed, I lifted the picture of Olivia off the table.

“So, where’s Olivia’s dad?” I said. I put the picture down. Wow, did I just say that out loud? Real subtle there, Mike. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”

“No, it’s okay. Olivia’s dad is in, um, California. We’ve been divorced two years now. We met in the air force. John was a little rough around the edges, but he was loving and funny and a brilliant natural mechanic. I always thought of him as the impulsive yin to my everything-in-its-place yang.

“In the beginning, everything was fine. John ran the service department of the Bethesda Mercedes dealership as I got promoted up through the ranks of the Bureau. It was hectic, of course, juggling two jobs and then Olivia, but we were a team, a real family. Then, two days after Olivia’s second birthday, John announced he needed to redefine himself.

“First came the tats and the piercings, and then finally, without my knowledge, the purchase of a body shop in California with most of our joint savings.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“Yeah, ouch is the word. JonJon’s Rods does custom hot rods for all the stars now, GTOs, Shelby Cobras. California ’s actually been really good for him.”

“And really, really shitty for you and your daughter,” I said.

Emily finished her wine and placed the glass carefully on the tablecloth in front of her.

“I should get going before you have to roll me out of here, Mike. I can’t tell you what a nice time I had. Your kids are even more incredible than that meal was. You’re a lucky man.”

“I’ll get you a taxi,” I said, standing.

The dining room table was cleared by the time I got back upstairs. I found Mary Catherine in the kitchen, banging dishes into the machine.

“Mary Catherine, you didn’t happen to see my slice of pie, did you?”

“Oh, sorry. I tossed it,” she said without turning around. “I thought you were done.”

She wiped her hands on a dish towel and opened the back door, heading to her room on our prewar’s top floor.

“Good night, now,” she said, slamming the door behind her.

Chrissy came into the kitchen then in her pajamas as I was wrapping my mind around what had just occurred.

“Daddy, Shawna says that Emily Parker is your new girlfriend. Is that true?” Chrissy said.

Oh, I thought, staring at the just-slammed door. Okay. Now I got it.

Like I said, men are dumb.

Part Two. FINAL EXAM

Chapter 19

CHELSEA SKINNER COULDN’T stop trembling. At first it was strictly because of fear, but after three hours of lying bound on a bone-numbingly cold stone floor, she felt like she was actually freezing to death.

The only other time she could remember being as cold was when she went skiing in Colorado for the first time, when she was six. Seeing her breath in the backyard of the house that her dad had just built, she’d made her mom crack up as she pretended to smoke an imaginary cigarette.

Chelsea began to cry through her chattering teeth. That was her problem right there, wasn’t it? Always wanting to be older, always having to push it. Why couldn’t she just be satisfied? It was as if there were a hole inside her, and no matter what she tried to fill it with-clothes, food, friends, drugs, boys-there was always just a little itty-bitty space left that kept her from feeling like a whole person. She practically deserved this. It was bound to happen. It was-

Stop! she commanded herself. You stop that right now!

She’d been abducted, and she was getting down on herself? Blaming herself? That had to stop yesterday. This wasn’t therapy. This wasn’t a confidence-building activity at Big Country, the wilderness rehab camp that her parents had sent her to last summer to “get her rear in gear,” as her dad had so cornily put it.