“I’m afraid to answer.”
“White Vans.”
I’d covered my face with my hands and laughed.
Now, I found myself anticipating her jokes.
Winnie also gave me a riddle to solve every morning before I left for work. They sat in the back of my brain all day while I tried to work.
Thursday’s had been: “What gets wetter the more it dries?”
I’d spent four hours distracted and trying to figure it out.Four hours. At lunch, Peterson caught me staring at a hand dryer in silence and asked if I was okay.
That afternoon, Billie had called me during a budget review.
“Dad,” she whispered dramatically, “Bianca killed CJ.”
Everything in me went cold immediately. I stood up so fast, my chair fell over. “What?”
“He died beautifully.”
“Billie!” There was a crash on the line, followed by Winnie taking the phone.
“Nobody is dead,” she said.
In the background, CJ shouted, “I was betrayed by my own sister.”
“I was playing the piano!” Bianca said.
Winnie sighed softly. “They were practicing for the spring recital, and somehow it evolved into a murder tragedy involving poisoned royalty.”
“Understandable,” I muttered weakly.
“CJ has written approximately six pages of backstory.”
Of course he had. I rubbed my forehead. And then, against all logic, I started laughing. It wasn’t a chuckle, but the kind of laugh I used to have before every phone call from home carried at least a small possibility of emergency.
“They’d be more than happy to perform it for you after dinner,” Winnie added.
“They would, would they?”
“Oh yes.”
By Friday, the routine no longer felt temporary, even though I kept waiting for the collapse. The screaming resignation. The tears. The “I’m so sorry, but your children are menaces.”
Instead, everything improved daily. The kids stopped demanding separate dinners every night, and they did their homework without needing intervention from the Geneva Convention. To my surprise and delight, CJ had even put away the laundry once, without being asked, though he had narrated the process like a war documentary. Bianca had taken lingering in the kitchen while Winnie cooked, saying she was observing knife techniques, but she obviously wanted the company. And darling Billie still created chaos, but now the chaos came with cleanup because Winnie had convinced her that true scientists respected their laboratories.
It was terrifyingly effective.
Some nights, the kids insisted that Winnie stay even when she was off duty. She always agreed, and I quickly found I enjoyed her presence. Friday night at dinner, we were eating roasted chicken with potatoes and green beans. Smiling, I glanced around the table. There was ketchup on Billie’s forehead for some reason, but she was happily shoveling food into her mouth. Bianca, like usual, was reading between bites. CJ was describing a school argument involving a raccoon mascot and deeply flawed democratic processes, gesturing with his fork.
It was so completely normal.
“A kid threw up on his desk in science today,” Bianca said, not bothering to look up from her book.
“That almost happened in my class, too,” CJ said, before stuffing some chicken into his mouth.
Billie wiggled in her chair, nodding enthusiastically. “A boy in my class actually made it into the hallway before he exploded.”
