Chapter 5 - Maren
Maren
I had one foot firmly in dreamland when a light tapping on my arm dragged me into the real world. I stirred, for a second not quite sure where I was. The sheets were softer, the pillows practically new, and there was no sinkhole sucking me into the middle of my mattress.
“Maren? Are you awake?” The tiniest whisper, and more tapping.
It started coming back to me. Ethan Cross. His brownstone in Back Bay. The job as a nanny. I squeezed my eyes shut as if it would transport me back to the nether realm. Back to where things were how they should be.
I had a journal when I was in junior high, in which I’d plotted out my whole life.
Liv was shocked when I showed it to her a couple of years ago for the first time.
Everything—from the dress I’d wear to senior prom, the college I’d go to and the school where I’d end up working…
Even the age I’d be when I got married. It was all in there.
She couldn’t believe it, and didn’t get how someone could plan their lives down to the smallest detail and see it through. I didn’t get how anyone couldn’t.
“Maaareeeen….” The whisper had a bite to it now.
I gave up the fight and turned over, blinking the sleepy fog from my brain. “What’s the matter, peanut?”
“Winston’s gone,” she said, her bottom lip quivering. She was all bedhead and pouty cheeks, barely awake herself. Which is why it made sense she’d gotten the name wrong.
“You mean Mr. Scallywag?” I stifled a yawn and pulled up to sit. “He’s fine. We put his bowl in the kitchen last night, remember? So he’d be close to the vase of pretty flowers.”
She shook her head hard, making her blonde curls bounce. “No, Winston. Not Mr. Scallywag. Mr. Scallywag is a fish.”
“Who’s Winston then?” I knew enough about kids to know I’d regret asking.
And Sadie didn’t disappoint.
“Winston’s my newt.”
I waited patiently for my sleep-addled synapses to catch up. “Your… newt?”
“Uh-huh.” She was close to tears again. “Winston.”
“Your newt, Winston. Okay.” I got up and scooped her into my arms. “Let’s figure this out while we’re getting ready for breakfast. What do you say?”
“No, we gotta find him now or he’ll die.” Cue the waterworks, with increased volume too.
Sadie buried her face in my neck and kicked against any form of comfort I tried. It wasn’t long before the hoopla brought Emma into my room.
“She’s always bringing bugs and stuff into the house even though our Mom and Dad say not to,” Emma said, happy to rat out her sister.
Sadie paused her crying long enough to yell, “He’s not a bug, he’s a newt!”
“He’s a bug, just like you,” Emma teased, and stuck out her tongue for good measure.
This sparked a new wave of bickering that kept getting louder the more I tried to diffuse the situation. It served as a cold reminder that whatever progress I thought we’d made was only on the surface. I was still a stranger to these kids. To this world.
“Isn’t it a little early to declare war on each other?”
I slackened my grip on Sadie and she went sliding down my body onto the floor. “Uh, hey.”
There was no way to prepare for what Ethan Cross looked like after just rolling out of bed on a Sunday morning. Hair all mussed up and his deep voice edged with gravel. Slept in. That’s what it was. Warm and soft, but also commanding. Even in an old, faded t-shirt and sweatpants.
“Nice pajamas.” The corners of his eyes crinkled with his smile, and I swear it was the thing that got Sadie to finally stop crying. “Everything okay?”
“No,” Sadie hiccupped. “Winston’s gone.”
His brow furrowed. “Who’s Winston?”
“My newt,” she said, her bottom lip quivering as fresh tears threatened to fall.
Ethan blinked. Once. Twice. “Your what?”
“Newt,” I repeated, afraid that Sadie would start up again if she were forced to rehash the whole story. “Apparently he’s gone missing.”
He stepped back, nodding over and over while scanning the floor. “There’s— There’s a lizard in the house?”
“It’s not exactly a lizard,” Emma offered, far too pleased with herself.
But Ethan was too busy studying the floor to care. “How do we happen to have a lizard in the house? Emma, you, uh, you knew about this?”
I hadn’t known him for very long, but I knew enough to recognize that tone in his voice wasn’t usual for him. Nothing about it fit the steady professional I’d met with the day before.
Sadie stomped her foot, hands on her hips. “He’s not a lizard! He’s a newt and he’s my best friend!”
Emma rolled her eyes. “I thought Mr. Scallywag was your best friend. And anyway, that lizard’s probably halfway to the sewer by now.”
That earned a shriek from Sadie and another wave of crying. I bent down to console her, but she wriggled away, shouting, “Don’t move or you’ll step on him!”
Which of course made Ethan take a few more startled steps back until he was all the way out in the hallway. Emma burst out laughing, but I tried not to.
“Not to be an alarmist,” I told him, “but you’re probably safer in here than the hall.”
Ethan’s face went white. “This isn’t funny. I can’t stand scaly things.”
“It’s a little funny,” I said, biting back my laughter. “And also, you have nothing to worry about, because newts don’t have scales.”
“They might as well,” he muttered, his gaze sweeping the floor in the hallway.
The door creaked open across the hall and Will appeared, hair sticking up, eyes heavy with sleep. “What’s going on?”
“We’re looking for Winston.” Sadie’s panic was still there, but the tears had thankfully subsided.
He yawned with that default lack of interest I was becoming familiar with. “Why do you call all the bugs you find, Winston?”
She started yet another explanation about how Winston was distinctly not a bug. And between Emma’s teasing and Ethan’s horror, I needed to lighten things up.
“Almost didn’t recognize you without your headphones on,” I said, and smiled at him. “For a second, I thought a strange kid must’ve broken in during the night.”
He cracked a smile then. Small, but it was there.
Ethan didn’t miss it either. “Huh. Thought you lost the ability to do that when you turned twelve.”
Will rolled his eyes, but didn’t stop smiling.
Sadie tugged at my hand. “What if he fell down the stairs?”
“Okay, everyone,” I said, clapping my hands to call the search party to order. “We’re going to move this downstairs. We’ll check under everything, behind doors, and whatever you do… move slowly, step carefully. Got it?”
Ethan made a low sound of protest. “I’ll wait up here. Tell me when the coast is clear.”
Sadie stopped at the top of the stairs and looked at him, aghast. “You’re not gonna help us look?”
I could’ve bailed him out, especially with the desperate look he gave me. But if my Sunday morning was going to be dedicated to Winston, then I wanted company.
“I don’t want him to die.” The little girl drove home the final blow that obliterated whatever excuse Ethan might have had.
His shoulders slumped, and he gestured for us to lead the way, muttering something like God, help me as he followed the troop downstairs.
We fanned out through the rooms downstairs, the early light still gray through the windows.
Sadie checked under couches and behind curtains, narrating her every move with heartbreaking optimism.
Emma, less enthused, poked halfheartedly at corners with a throw pillow for a shield, while Will knelt near the TV console, lifting cords and sighing heavily as though he could think of a hundred things he’d rather be doing.
Ethan had ducked into the kitchen first thing, and went to sit on a bar stool at the island in the center of the room. Feet safely off the floor. Every time I passed the doorway, I caught him nervously looking around as though he expected to be ambushed at any second.
We were mid–living room sweep when the front door opened without so much as a knock.
“Everyone’s up, but I don’t smell bacon. What a disappointment,” a familiar, amused voice called.
Miles.
Adrian trailed in behind him, both of them looking entirely too awake for this hour.
“Nice jammies,” he said, holding back a grin.
“What’s wrong with my pajamas?” I finally gave in. “First Ethan, and now you. It’s a t-shirt and pants.”
At first I thought my white t-shirt was the culprit, but I’d double-checked in my room after Ethan’s comment. It wasn’t all that transparent.
“The pants are the problem,” Adrian snorted with laughter. “My Little Pony?”
Miles was the quiet bystander in all this, but I could feel his gaze on me. Studying me.
“I’ll have you know,” I started, adopting the knowledgeable tone I reserved for cases just like this, “that the philosophy of My Little Pony isn’t just for kids. It’s rich and layered, and actually quite beautiful if anyone bothered to pay attention.”
It had been a gift from one of my kindergarten kids last year. My knowledge of the show began and ended with what I overheard during free play sessions at school.
But they didn’t need to know that.
“Philosophy, huh?” Ethan appeared in the living room, apparently over his paralyzing fear of Winston. “Please, share.”
Sure, he’d be the one to call me on it.
“I’d rather we find the newt instead of wasting ti—”
“Find the what now?” Miles did a double-take.
“Sadie brought a new friend into the house again,” Ethan explained. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “What are you doing here? It’s eight a.m.”
“Well, we were hoping for breakfast,” Miles said, “and didn’t want to waste a wonderful Sunday morning on the only thing in our pantry, which is unsalted crackers.”
Ethan squinted. “Since when do you two come over for breakfast?”
A beat passed.
Miles and Adrian exchanged a loaded look, before each turning back to Ethan with a sheepish smile. There was more to it than breakfast, but they weren’t going to tell on themselves. The way Miles had been looking at me when they first came in kinda gave me a hint as to the secret they were hiding.
Before anyone could comment on it, Sadie’s voice shattered the tension. “I see him!”
Ethan nearly jumped out of his skin, and I bit back a laugh. Sadie pointed under the armchair near the window, her face lighting up like it was Christmas morning. “I saw him go under there. I saw his tail.”
Ethan groaned and backed up to the kitchen again. “I’m making coffee. You guys handle… it.”
We rallied around Sadie to hopefully catch sight of this thing and bring him to safety, with Miles brushing close to me as I crouched down beside the armchair. He was fresh out of a shower, and smelled like spring rain. I couldn’t look right at him.
“Just so you know,” he said, voice low so only I could hear, “I haven’t forgotten about your wild My Little Pony claims.”
“I’m not surprised,” I replied without hesitation, keeping my attention on Sadie as she instructed her siblings through the rescue.
But after a few minutes, it became obvious Sadie’s sighting had been wishful thinking. There was no Winston anywhere near the couch.
“He was there. I saw him.”
“It’s a leaf.” Emma flung a dry, orange leaf at her, and she slapped it away.
“It had legs, and a tail.”
Before another round of sibling warfare could break out, Ethan returned with his mug of steaming coffee. “Okay, guys,” he said, keeping a cautious distance, “we should divide and conquer before Winston turns up somewhere unfortunate.”
Adrian lifted a brow. “Define unfortunate.”
“My bed. My shoes. Anywhere near me,” Ethan said.
Will popped out from behind the curtain and announced, “I’ll go check my room.”
“No video games before you’ve brushed your teeth,” I called after him. All I got was a dismissive wave over his shoulder as he left the living room.
“I’ll take the office with Maren,” Ethan said. “Miles and Sadie can check the dining room. Ace and Emma take the kitchen.”
“I’ll take the office,” Adrian said, and before Ethan could argue, “You and Emma can get breakfast going. Aren’t you hungry, Em?”
“Starving.” She stalked off without needing a second invitation.
Whatever I sensed happening between the men rivaled the constant push and pull of the kids. They were less vocal about it, but I could’ve sworn I caught a meaningful look. A sly smirk.
“You coming, Uncle Miles?” Sadie slipped her hand into Miles’ and led him to the dining room.
Bubble burst.