He prepared his final volley. If he knew her, she wouldn’t be able to wait.
Jack:Forget it. It’s not important. We can do it tomorrow. I’ll catch up with you then.
Why was he trying so hard? This would actually work better. Esme would arrive while Blair was out and could wait for her in the house.
But… he wouldn’t get to be there for the surprise.
Blair:No, no, I’m coming home. I’ll see you soon.
Jack:Text me when you’re home, and I’ll bring the pages to you.
He blew out a breath and clicked over to a browser to check Esme’s flight, which, after all of this, had better be on time.
Chapter 15
Cahoots
Everything went smoothly with Esme’s arrival. She tapped on Jack’s door a little after six. Perfect timing. Blair had texted him ten minutes ago that she was home and ready to read his pages, and he’d been stressing about holding her off. He swung open the door and stepped back. “Come in for a second so she doesn’t see you.”
“Thanks for helping me!” Esme floated in on a cloud of sandalwood.
Esme was her mother’s mini-me—only physically, though. Her fashion sense was on a completely different plane. Her flowy floral sundress and her round pink John Lennon glasses made her look like she’d teleported from Haight-Ashbury circa 1967. Oddly, seeing her standing there in the dim light of his entryway, looking so like her mother yet nothing like her mother… well, it got to him.
She was looking at him funny, so he got his shit together. “Happy to help. Your mom is going to be thrilled.”
It occurred to him that there was no reason he should accompany Esme to the main house. He’d gone to such pains to make sure the surprise happened as they had planned—and that it happened in such a way that he could witness it. But really, there was no need for him to be involved from this point.
It was disappointing.
“You’d better head up,” he said, holding out the fob. “She’s expecting me. Actually, I’m overdue, and she might start marchingover here at any moment.” To see the pages he had dangled before her but had no intention of showing her. “You can leave your bags here for now if you want.”
Esme took the fob but said, “You’re not coming?”
“I don’t want to intrude.”
He wanted very much to intrude.
“Oh, come on. You did all the legwork. You shouldn’t miss the payoff.” She paused in the entryway, and he had the sudden fear that she could read his mind, that she knew how much he wanted not to miss this reunion. “You coming?”
He didn’t need to be asked twice.
“You can still leave your bags here if you want.” She was carrying a lot of shoulder bags: an enormous one that looked to be made of mismatched quilt squares, a slouchy leather handbag with a Gucci logo on it, and a pink lunch bag with a long strap. Leaving them would free her up to be tackled by her mother.
“Great, thanks.” She put all but the pink lunch bag down. “I can’t leave Mrs. Frankenstein here, though. She’s been cooped up too long.”
“I’m sorry, you can’t leave who here?”
She rotated the bag so he could see through a little window on one side of it. The lunch bag, it turned out, was not a lunch bag but a carrier for some kind of rodent. He was so far away from his usual life that it even made sense to him, in that moment, that the child of a woman with pets named after Twilight and the Addams Family would have a rodent named Mrs. Frankenstein.
“What is all this junk?” she asked as she passed the bowl of crow trinkets he kept on the bench in the entryway. He’d added a paper clip and the head of a porcelain doll to the collection that very morning.
“I’m feeding some crows, and they bring me gifts.”
That stopped her in her tracks, and she looked at him as if for the first time. “Really?”
“Really.”
“That is badass.”
