Page 133 of Creeping Beautiful

She was into Disney princesses back then. So she had princess shit everywhere. Sheets, and pillow cases, and a quilt I had made for her specially by the dressmaker seamstress last Christmas.

But that was when I realized that Indie’s dress wasn’t hanging on her closet door like it should be. That’s where I always put it. Every year I had this dress made. And I would hide it from her until the night before her birthday when I was sure she was asleep. And then I would creep in and hang it up on her closet door so she would see it first thing when she woke up.

The hanger was there, but the dress was not.

So the smell of cake was my first clue, but that empty hanger was the second.

Because she put the dress on before breakfast and that was not how this day was done. This day was done with McKay waking Donovan and me up first, and then Indie, who was a late sleeper.

She even fed Maggie something different that day. Cereal from a box.

McKay did not buy cereal from a box when he went grocery shopping. Cereal to him meant oatmeal. Which we didn’t eat often because… oatmeal.

But when I went downstairs and walked into the kitchen there was a box of Cocoa Puffs on the kitchen counter. It looked so out of place I stopped at the island to just stare at it for a moment.

Then I looked at Maggie. She was sitting in her high chair, one hand rolling Cocoa Puffs around on the tray like they were toys, and the other busily grabbing handfuls of the soggy chocolate balls from a bowl and stuffing them in her mouth.

I did say something. “What the hell is this?” Or maybe, “Why is she eating that crap?” And I noticed that Indie was wearing the dress, but I was so distracted by Maggie’s bowl of cereal that I didn’t have a chance to comment on it.

Then McKay was there, shirtless and his sweatpant shorts showing off the fucking cut muscles of his waist. And he just breezed right past me, picked that bowl up off the high-chair tray, and plopped it in the sink.

I looked at Maggie to see how she was gonna take this new development. Her lips were gettin’ pouty like she was gearing up for a wail. But McKay snatched a spatula out of the canister we kept the kitchen utensils in and pointed it at her. “I don’t want no lip from you, missy. You’re having pancakes.”

I guess Maggie decided that was an offer she could live with, because she didn’t cry.

Then Donovan was there, scowling at everyone. “What the hell is going on here?”

He was shirtless too. And he was a good eight years younger than me, so yeah. He had the body of a twenty-five-year-old. But that dumbass wore real pajama pants to bed and these were light, light blue with tiny pinstripes. And his hair was all standing up on his head, so he was hard to take seriously in the morning and no one bothered to answer.

He took a seat on an island barstool right next to Maggie and started making faces at her.

Indie was watching us with a smile on her face as she frosted cupcakes with a butter knife. I told you she wasn’t a baker. They were pink and had something mixed into the frosting. Little bits of dark red things.

I asked her the same question though. “What the hell are you doing, Indie?”

“You can see with your own eyes that I am baking.” She stopped her frosting and beamed a smile at me.

And I remember thinking, Well, at least she had the good sense to wear an apron so the damn thousand-dollar dress I had made specially for her didn’t get ruined.

But then I said, “Why are you baking?”

McKay was already gathering up ingredients for pancakes, so he wasn’t paying attention. Donovan was busy talking to Mags.

“Because Maggie wanted cupcakes and dewberries for breakfast, so we went out and picked some berries and I made cupcakes.”

“Dewberries?” I was confused. Did we have dewberries on this property? I didn’t think so. But it had been twenty years since I went wandering around anything but the gardens.

But that’s when McKay paused his kitchen duties, finally realizing that things were… off. “We’re not eating cupcakes for breakfast. And your birthday cake is sitting in the freaking fridge. I picked it up yesterday afternoon.”

“Cupcakes. Pancakes. I’m not sure there’s much difference, McKay. Besides, I wasn’t gonna let her eat them. They’re for later.” Then she set her butter knife down, wiped her hands on her apron, and panned a hand at a tray of champagne glasses and a pitcher of what looked like orange juice. But the open bottle of champagne nearby told me it was not just orange juice. “We’re having mimosas, too.”

So then I was thinking. OK. We have Indie up early. We have cupcakes. We have boxed cereal. We have the dress. And we have mimosas.

We didn’t let Indie drink. Ever. It was a rule.

All this was settin’ off little alarms in my head. But I couldn’t place my finger on why. It was all unusual, but there was nothing bad about any of it. Still, my stomach had that feeling it gets when a job is about to go wrong.

Donovan finally joined the conversation. “We don’t drink champagne for breakfast.”