Chapter 2 #2
Only women who’ve tangoed with Everett under the sheets call him by his proper first name. It’s a naughty little door prize they all cling to. Everyone else calls him Everett, the name he actually prefers.
Well. Except for his mother.
And his sister. And Noah’s mother, Suze.
And okay, fine, there are a number of exceptions to this rule, but the point stands.
“Lottie!” Haley, the dark-haired woman, waves enthusiastically.
She’s the mother of Everett’s thirteen-year-old twin daughters, Ava and Olivia, and also happens to be our pediatrician now.
She’s the best of the best, and I genuinely love her.
But every time she says Essex, something inside me twitches.
The twins flank their grandmother, both in jeans and matching blue tops. They share Everett’s dark hair and blue eyes, and they just turned thirteen a few weeks back. Just like my boys, they’re fraternal, but they look enough alike for me to get confused now and again, and again, and again.
We only just discovered them about a year ago through one of those DNA matching websites, and the whole thing couldn’t have worked out better.
They’re smart, funny, and only occasionally roll their eyes at me, which I consider a win.
And to be perfectly honest, I’m just glad Everett didn’t discover far more children than that.
He was rather prolific in his one-night-stand romp across the Eastern Seaboard before he met me.
“Hey, Dad,” they say in unison, and Everett grins as they each offer him another quick embrace.
He’s been a lot of things in his life. Judge, playboy, husband. But Dad is his favorite role yet.
“How are you two doing?” I ask.
They shrug in perfect synchronization.
“We’re at the circus.” Ava grunts it out as if it were a punishment.
The enthusiasm is underwhelming.
“Your big sister Evie is in there somewhere too,” I tell them, motioning toward the big top.
Everly Baxter, Evie, is Everett’s oldest daughter, the one he discovered a few years back after her mother abandoned her.
I adopted Evie officially, and she’s home from college for the summer, probably eating her weight in popcorn as we speak. “I’m so glad you’re all here!”
“We are too.” Haley laughs. “We got free tickets from one of the hospital board members. A total stroke of luck.”
Ava and Olivia groan, letting their opinion be known on what qualifies as luck.
“I’m on the board as well,” Eliza adds. “So I received a ticket, too. And we thought it would be lovely to come together.”
“We love spending time with Mimi Lizzy,” Ava says, and Olivia nods.
The funny thing is, they were neighbors with Eliza for years and years, and they were calling her Mimi Lizzy long before they knew she was their grandmother.
“Mimi Lizzy!” Lyla Nell shrieks from Noah’s shoulders, and Eliza’s entire face brightens.
“There’s the little princess,” Eliza coos as she gives Lyla Nell’s foot a little pat.
She fawns over the boys as well, and within seconds, Lyla Nell is back on the ground, holding hands with Ava and Olivia as they wander toward a booth selling glow sticks.
“I’m actually leaving town for the week,” Haley says, turning back to me. “There’s a medical conference in Munich, and I’ve had it planned for months. I’m dropping the girls off with a sitter in the morning, so it’s our last night together for a bit.”
“Oh, I wish you’d asked us first!” I say. “Everett has this whole week off.”
Haley’s eyes widen. “Really? Oh wow, I wish I had known. But they love their sitter.” She leans my way. “I think she lets them get away with murder.”
We all share a laugh at that one.
“It’s probably for the best,” Carlotta says. “Lot Lot doesn’t let anyone get away with murder. But Foxy? He couldn’t catch a killer if they tied their own shoelaces together. Heck, if they tied their own shoelaces to his.”
“Carlotta?” Noah looks both perplexed and offended. But I don’t see why. Carlotta happens to speak the truth, but I wouldn’t dare say it out loud.
“Next time,” Everett says with a nod. “We’d love to have them.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Haley says with a laugh.
Honestly, the sitter probably dodged nothing and we dodged everything. With my own twins waging war against sleep, and Lyla Nell faring no better in that department, we’re already outnumbered, outgunned, and operating on about three collective hours of sleep.
Haley looks from Noah to Everett. “I still find it so fascinating that the two of you were once sort of related, and now basically you’re sort of related again. Eliza told me all about it. Of course, we haven’t told the girls.”
Noah and Everett share a disgruntled look. It’s true. They were once related via marriage when Eliza married Noah’s con-artist father, Wiley. They’ve since divorced—or whatever it was legally referred to after Wiley faked his own death. And now they both share a family with me.
Noah shifts, and I catch him and Everett exchanging one of those looks, half sizing each other up, half reluctant respect. The two of them still circle each other like wolves that can’t decide if they’re allies or competitors.
Spoiler alert: it’s both.
“We’d better get inside,” Haley says, glancing at her watch. “The girls want to load up on cotton candy and corn dogs, and I told them it’s more than okay on a special occasion like this.”
Eliza gathers the girls, and they head toward the big top. Lyla Nell skips between Ava and Olivia as if she’s found her new best friends.
“We should get going too,” I say, and I’m about to suggest we load up on treats of our own when I spot the cutest little big thing I’ve ever laid eyes on, and it just so happens to be an elephant.
“Oh my word, look at that sweet baby elephant!”
Carlotta squints at the empty space beside the stroller. “Lottie, that’s not a baby. That thing is the size of a dumpster.”
She’s standing right next to the stroller, about the size of—okay, fine, Carlotta’s right, she’s about the size of a dumpster—but she’s got the most precious pink bow sitting on top of her tiny head, and she’s looking at me with big, soulful eyes that make my heart do a little hiccup.
“I’m pretty sure she’s on the small side, as far as elephants go.” I turn to Noah and Everett. “Please tell Carlotta that is definitely the size of a baby elephant.”
Noah and Everett exchange another look, this one far more worrisome.
“Lemon,” Everett says slowly, “we don’t see a pink elephant.”
I freeze. “What?”
“You haven’t been hitting the vanilla extract again, have you, Lottie?” Noah is only half teasing, and there’s a thread of concern in his voice that makes my stomach drop.
“Noah, you see the elephant. Right?” I tip my ear his way.
He shakes his head.
The baby elephant lets out the most adorable little trumpet sound, somewhere between a squeak and a roar, and then she explodes into a shower of tiny pink stars that rain down around us like supernatural confetti.
“Oh my stars!” I cry out. “You know what this means?”
Noah nods. “It means murder.”
The circus has come to town, and so has a killer.