Chapter 46 Clarice
CLARICE
Monday morning’s chaos was, if anything, more pronounced than Sunday’s, and Clarice felt run off her feet before everyone had been through the bathroom line and been fed the rather paltry breakfast of stale crackers sprinkled with parmesan cheese and baked, plus a few granola bars that were cut up into thirds.
Everyone wanted seconds that weren’t available, several whined for milk or juice.
Amy burst into tears because there was no bread, and because she missed her mom.
The mood was decidedly more subdued, and Clarice found herself being clung to by several of the children. Tara had decided that Clarice was nice, and trotted around at her heels being helpful in the kitchen to the point that Clarice nearly fell over her twice.
Even Cherry’s patience was strained, and she was sharp the third time Gil ignored instructions and went crashing into his classmates during games.
Vivian didn’t want to continue dosing the captives, so she let them wake up. Theo and Roderick took shifts watching them, letting each have a turn in the bathroom under supervision while the kids were safely in the romp room playing a hide and seek game.
By noon, everyone was hungry and grouchy. The mercenaries were complaining and swearing in the back room of the house loud enough to carry, the children were arguing about what game to play, and the adults were having heated discussions about the risk of getting a grocery order together.
“There’s no reason we can’t go in the back yard, is there?” Clarice finally suggested to Cherry. “They don’t want to be cooped up any more than I do. It’s snowing, maybe we can make snowmen. Does everyone have snow gear?”
This idea was met with universal enthusiasm, and Clarice got firsthand experience trying to get six kids and two babies into snowsuits and coats.
It was like trying to herd puppies, and she was pretty sure that had nothing to do with the fact that they were shifters.
Shane refused to put his arms and legs into the snowsuit that Vivian gave her, and every time Clarice got one limb in, he’d wriggled another one free.
She finally figured out how to hold in his bottom half and wrangle in his top half and zipped him up so fast she was afraid she’d pinched his chin at his dreadful wail.
Darius grumbled about having to put his phone down, and argued with Theo about wearing his hat, Tara and Lucy quarreled over a scarf, and Gil put his boots on the wrong feet.
But once they were outside, everything was magical.
The softly falling snow turned the fenced backyard into a beautiful little Narnia, with lace-draped trees and banks of snow to run and leap into.
The play was delightfully unstructured, as everyone—child and adult alike—ran to catch snowflakes and form snowballs and join in elaborate imagination games.
“Christmas” was the children’s favorite, with Tara and Gil bossing everyone into lying in the snow so Santa could come. The presents under the tree were all snowballs, which children pretended to unwrap as they shredded them into sparkling dust.
“I got a NINTENDO!” Gil declared. “And a space rocket!”
“I got a magic wand!” Tara cheered. “And a PHONE.” It was as excited as Clarice had yet seen her.
“What do you want, Amy?” Clarice asked the girl, who was bouncing in place in snow that was waist-deep on her.
“COCCKA!” Amy said, which made no sense to Clarice, but everyone around them nodded sagely.
“What did YOU get, MISS CLARICE?” Gil asked.
Clarice looked at the lumpy snowball in her hands and then looked up from where she was sitting to meet his eyes. “I got a family,” she said. “It was just what I always wanted.
Gil was greatly unimpressed.
They were still outside playing, the youngest kids just starting to run out of steam and rub their eyes, when a stream of vehicles pulled up in front.
Clarice had a moment of what NOW panic, then heard Juliette’s voice. Jackson gave a shout of welcome and toddled for the gate, falling in the thick snow and landing on his face to shriek in outrage.
Parents came in through the gate to greet their children with great relief and Clarice hung back awkwardly as they went through reunions.
Olivia had one arm in a sling and had to hug Lucy from one side.
Kendra’s face was mottled with bruises, and Clarice touched the side of her tender head to remember that she probably didn’t look much better.
Tara trotted up to Becket very gravely and hugged his knees.
Juliette picked Jackson up out of the snow and tossed him into the air to turn his wails to chortles of joy.
Darius grudgingly accepted a hug and Juliette ruffled his hair (his hat had been stuffed into a pocket as soon as he was outside).
“I can’t stay,” she said. “We’ve got to process the guys you helped catch and mop up some loose ends. But everyone is free to go home now. We’ve dismantled the better part of three organizations and that’s going to be so much paperwork I can’t even imagine, but this should be the end of it.”
Clarice kept the kids in the back yard a little longer while Juliette’s team exchanged a few essential groceries for criminals and pulled out of the driveway, leaving behind just the Tiny Paws parents.
Addison took her package of diapers with visible relief. “I was about to see if I could rig something out of dishtowels and binder clips.”
Bruno and Clarice got all the kids snacks while parents packed up their things and tried to identify who owned various socks and toys.
“Did you find Veronica?” Clarice asked anxiously, when she finally had a moment with Juliette.
Juliette had been smiling and that smile went brittle. “We found her,” she said carefully. “She’s safely back home now. She’ll be under surveillance for a while, but we’re not bringing any charges against her. She should be at work tomorrow, just like usual.”
“She still might have bugged the day care and been the reason they got Addison,” Roderick growled. He was clearly not ready to believe that Veronica was innocent.
“Stork had someone working at Nickel City dispatch,” Juliette said, still neutral. “That’s how they intercepted the 9-1-1 call and it’s how they knew where you were.”
“No one here called 9-1-1,” Roderick said suspiciously.
“A neighbor did, helpfully reporting that a bunch of people with little kids were squatting in an empty house. Ironically, they thought it might be a kidnapping ring.”
“Moooooom.” Darius was waiting in the doorway. “I gotta check on my pets. They’re hungry and Tilly needs her meds. Dad is still getting Jackson ready, can’t we GO now?”
The house slowly got quieter and less crowded as each family left, until Bruno, Gil, and Clarice were the only ones, waiting on agents to bring their cars from the lot where they’d been stashed after their mansion misadventures.
Clarice cleaned the kitchen to sparkling and Bruno took out the trash.
Gil was put to work haphazardly sweeping the floor, but mostly he used the broom as a weapon or a microphone, swiping at chairs and singing off-key.
“Stop hitting the furniture, please,” Bruno said, snapping him with a towel.
This precipitated a swift, laughing broom battle that ended in Gil being disarmed and then set back to work, giggling.
“What a weekend,” Clarice observed wearily. “Horatio is going to be so mad at me when I get home. I hope Noah left him enough food. He doesn’t like stale water. I hope he didn’t refuse to drink it and make himself sick.”
Bruno had been putting dishes away and he seemed to hear a note in Clarice’s voice that she didn’t intend. “You were amazing,” he said.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You knocked a guy out with his own dart,” Bruno pointed out. “You were smart enough not to get tranqed. You were the one who knew how to figure out where they went to ground.”
“It doesn’t feel like a lot.” Was she whining? How childish of her.
Then Bruno’s strong arms were around her and he was kissing her neck. “You saved me from hypothermia, and Tiny Paws is safe again. It’s a lot to me. I love you.”
Clarice felt all of her reservations and doubts evaporate at his words and the feel of his body up against her. He loved her. This magical, kind, clever man loved her and if he could, couldn’t she be worthy of it? “I love you,” she told him shyly, and his arms tightened around her.
“DOUBLE HUG!” Gil tackled them both around the knees and squeezed hard.
Clarice really had gotten a family for Christmas.