Chapter 9
Nora
“—and then I told Rob that if he doesn’t stop leaving his toenail clippings on the bathroom floor, I’m going to collect them into a jar and present them to him at Christmas as a decorative keepsake.”
“Mm-hm.”
“And he said that was fair, actually, because he’s been saving my hair from the shower drain to weave into a small rug.”
“Right.”
“And then a pelican flew through the kitchen window and stole the baby.”
“That sounds—wait.” I blink. “What?”
Miranda stops walking and turns to face me, smug. “A pelican. Stole. The baby.”
“You did not say that.”
“I absolutely said that. I also said Rob is weaving a rug from my shower hair, which you agreed sounded reasonable.” She folds her arms. “Nonny, you haven’t heard a word I’ve said for the last four minutes. Where are you right now?”
I’m in my kitchen, feeling the desperate press of his mouth before he pulled away and looked at me like he’d committed arson.
I’m bent over my kitchen counter. His hands on my hips. His mouth at my ear. The counter edge bruising my thighs while he pounds into me so hard I forget I’m a professional with a reputation, and a brain that usually works.
I’m standing in my doorway, watching his car disappear, wishing he didn’t look at me like I’m something he regrets. Like touching me was the most devastating thing he’s ever done.
“I’m here,” I say. “I’m right here. Walking. With you. In the park.”
“You’re physically in the park. Mentally, you’re on another planet. And it’s not a calm planet. You’ve got this—” She gestures at my whole body. “This tension thing going on. Like you’re clenching from the inside.”
“I’m not clenching.”
“You are. You look like you haven’t slept properly in a week—and not in a fun way. In the way where a woman needs either a very long bath or a very short man.”
“Miranda.”
“I’m just saying. When’s the last time you—”
“We are not having this conversation in a public park.”
“Fine. When’s the last time you had a night that didn’t end with you, a puzzle, and a dog who snores?”
“Archie doesn’t snore.”
“Archie absolutely snores. I’ve heard him.
He sounds like a lawnmower with feelings.
” She loops her arm through mine and steers us around a woman doing aggressive tai chi on the path.
“My point is, you’re wound tighter than a Swiss watch, and you’ve been like this for weeks.
Something is eating at you, and you won’t tell me what. ”
I should confide in her. That is the obvious, healthy, sister-approved course of action.
Miranda would take one look at the facts, feed me a pretzel from the paper bag she’s carrying like a carbohydrate sherpa, and tell me what to do next in twelve aggressively practical bullet points.
She’d also make at least one inappropriate joke, which, frankly, I could use.
Instead I say, “It’s work.”
Miranda stops so abruptly I nearly yank her off the path. “Wow.”
“What?”
“That was such a bad lie I almost respect it.” She stares at me. “Do you hear yourself? It’s work? Nora. You’ve had actual work stress, and this isn’t it. Work stress makes you color-code things and become obsessed with toner levels. Whatever this is has made you weird.”
“I’m not weird. And it is work. There’s a situation with a student’s family. A custody thing where the mother is literally trying to kidnap her on my watch. It’s stressful.”
This is technically true, and I hate that I hear how flimsy it sounds even as I say it.
Miranda hears it too. Obviously.
She gives me a long, flat look. “That is not the whole truth.”
“No,” I admit, because there’s no point trying to bluff a woman who once correctly identified when I started dating my ex-husband solely from the fact that I started buying better oranges. “It’s not.”
Her expression softens immediately. “OK. So tell me the rest.”
We start walking again, slower now. The October air has that crisp Chicago edge that feels clean in your lungs, and the trees along the path are halfway to gold. Joggers pass us in expensive athletic gear. Somewhere behind us, a toddler is having a full existential collapse over a dropped cracker.
I stare straight ahead. “There’s a parent involved.”
Miranda makes a tiny sound of triumph. “Ah.”
“It is not an ah.”
“It is deeply an ah.”
“It’s not like that.”
She turns her head and just looks at me.
I sigh. “Fine. It is a little like that.”
“A little?”
“Don’t make me quantify it.”
She bites back a grin so visibly it’s insulting. “I’m trying very hard to be mature.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“You’re right, I’m not.” She looks ahead of us. “Put that stick down now!”
Miranda’s kids—Amelia, five, and Angus, three—are twenty feet ahead of us on the path, engaged in a territorial dispute over a stick that Amelia found and Angus has claimed through the universal toddler doctrine of “I want it, so it’s mine.
” Their father, Rob, is at home recovering from a head cold that Miranda describes as “basically a man-flu extinction event.”
Amelia drops the stick instantly, because Amelia likes rules when they’re directed at other people. Angus, on the other hand, clamps both hands around it and glares at his sister like a tiny union leader refusing to cross a picket line.
Archie stands beside me, tail going, desperate for that stick to be thrown—but he’s much too much of a good boy to run and claim it for himself.
“Angus,” I call in my principal voice—which works on most children under ten and a surprising number of adults over forty. “That stick belongs to the park.”
He considers this. Then he holds the stick over his head and yells, “MINE.”
Miranda sighs. “See? This is what happens when you marry for cheekbones.”
“Rob does have impressive cheekbones,” I say.
“He does. Useless in a crisis, but excellent in photographs.”
Amelia pivots and points at her brother. “He licked it.”
“Well, now nobody wants it,” Miranda says. “Problem solved.”
Archie, tragically, still wants it. His entire golden body quivers with the effort of respecting civilization. I put a hand on his head before he can decide drool isn’t, in fact, a disqualifier.
Miranda starts walking again, and I go with her. “You were saying,” she prompts.
I was, unfortunately.
“There’s a father,” I say.
Miranda makes a strangled sound that’s mostly delight and partly vindication. “A father.”
“Yes.”
“At your school?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, this is delicious.”
“It is really not.”
“Is he hot?”
I give her a look.
“That’s a yes,” she says instantly. “How hot?”
“Miranda.”
“On a scale from substitute history teacher to ‘would absolutely ruin your life in a linen shirt’?”
I snort despite myself. “Neither. He’s . . . composed.”
She stares at me. “Composed is not a hotness category. That’s a personality trait. Serial killers are composed.”
“He’s—”
“ARCHIMEDES!” The sound splits the morning—high-pitched, ecstatic, approaching at speed.
Archie’s ears go flat. His tail starts helicoptering. His entire sixty-five-pound body vibrates at a frequency that suggests he has identified his favorite human and is prepared to abandon all leash protocols to reach her.
I turn just in time to see Michaela Kingsley tearing across the park at a dead sprint, hair flying, coat half off, face incandescent with the kind of joy reserved for Christmas morning and surprise puppies.
She collides with Archie at full speed. The dog nearly topples.
Michaela wraps both arms around his neck and buries her face in his fur, and Archie—who has been politely tolerating the pigeon situation, the stick diplomacy, and the general indignity of leash-walking—loses his absolute mind.
Tail flicking. Tongue everywhere. The two of them become a single organism of mutual adoration on the park path while joggers swerve around them.
“I missed you SO MUCH,” Michaela tells Archie, who responds by putting both paws on her shoulders and washing her entire face. “That is disgusting and I love it.”
Miranda stares. “Do you . . . know this child?”
“That’s Michaela.”
“Have you mentioned a Michaela?”
I look her dead in the eye. “I believe I just did.”
Her mouth forms an O. “The custody one?”
“Miranda, lower your voice.”
“Oh my God.”
“Please don’t.”
Behind Michaela, gaining ground with significantly less speed and significantly more visible distress, is a woman in heeled ankle boots and a structured wool coat that was not designed for sudden acceleration.
She’s tall, striking, with red lipstick, dark hair, and the kind of put-together polish that makes you instinctively check whether your own outfit passes inspection.
Serena Morgan. Caleb Kingsley’s partner.
I recognize her immediately from the school’s showcase last semester—the one where Michaela presented her dolphin project and what appeared to be half of Chicago’s legal and financial elite showed up to watch.
There had been a whole row of them, David’s people, filling the back of the room like a well-dressed private army.
Michaela had beamed from her exhibit like a tiny celebrity with a devoted entourage.
I remember standing at the back of the room, thinking that a child so loved was the luckiest thing in the world.
Serena had introduced herself afterward while Michaela was demonstrating echolocation to anyone who would listen. “Serena Morgan. I’m with Caleb—Michaela’s uncle. You must be Principal Harrison. Michaela thinks you walk on water.”
I’d said something professional and appropriate about what a delight Michaela was. What I’d thought was: this woman could run a country and look good doing it.
Now she arrives on the path, slightly winded, one hand pressed to her chest, boots clicking on the concrete.
“Michaela—Kingsley—you cannot just—bolt—” She bends forward, hands on knees. “I’m not built for sprinting. I’m built for boardrooms and controlled environments.”
“You’re built for Uncle Caleb,” Michaela says without looking up from Archie. “That’s what Grandma says.”
“That’s . . .” Serena ponders. “That’s actually really nice.” She straightens and sees me. Recognition flickers, then lands. “Principal Harrison! Oh, thank God. For a second I thought she’d attached herself to a stranger’s dog and I was going to have to negotiate a detachment.”
“He is very much not a stranger.” Michaela surfaces from the fur. “This is Archimedes. He’s Principal Harrison’s dog. We’re old friends.”
“You’ve met him twice,” I point out.
“Quality over quantity.”
Serena extends her hand, and I shake it. Her grip is firm and warm, and up close she’s even more striking—dark eyes, sharp cheekbones, the kind of effortless confidence that makes you simultaneously want to be her friend and wonder if you’re cool enough to qualify.
“Nora, please,” I say. “We’re not at school.”
“Of course.” Serena looks down at the child-dog pile on the path with fond exasperation.
“I’m on Michaela duty today because David’s at the office and Marta’s still in Milwaukee with her mom.
Caleb was supposed to co-babysit, but he got called into an emergency client meeting—so it’s just me and my complete lack of childcare credentials. ”
“You’re doing great,” I say. “She’s alive and happy. That’s the whole job.”
I say it like I’m offering professional reassurance, and not like I spent last Tuesday doing exactly this job while David was unreachable and Serena was presumably somewhere being part of his actual life.
“The bar is that low?”
“On Saturdays? Absolutely.”
Serena laughs, and it’s the kind of laugh that invites you in—warm, unguarded, generous. I like her immediately. Which is inconvenient, because she’s part of David’s world and I’m supposed to be maintaining distance from David’s world.
Miranda appears at my elbow with the subtlety of a woman who has been eavesdropping from four feet away and has decided the reconnaissance phase is over.
“Hi,” she says brightly. “I’m Miranda. Nora’s sister.”