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“I don’t know,” he whispered back.
She rolled her eyes and ducked into the bedroom, then the bathroom. She emerged with a wrinkled blob that looked familiar. “Put it on.”
“I thought I’d take a shower.” Anything to absent himself from this family drama.
“I need you in the kitchen.”
He tugged the shirt over his head. “What is my role here, exactly?”
“I guess we’re about to find out.”
Then she led him to the kitchen table, pushed him down into a chair, and left him alone with Nancy while she “helped” May make the coffee. The sisters bent their heads over the machine, exchanging fierce whispers and behaving for all the world as though coffee-making were a complex activity that required the full attention of two grown women.
Nancy folded her arms on the table and leaned forward with an expectant smile on her face.
Her hair was impressively large. She wore a black headband to smooth it back from her forehead, but behind the band it kind of went crazy, a fluffy hair explosion that was almost as wide as her narrow shoulders and ended just beneath her chin.
Her eyes were nearly as startling—a bright, too vivid blue that would have looked Photoshopped if he’d seen it in a magazine—and they combined with the sharpness of her long, narrow nose and the tilting thing she did with her head to give him the impression of a heron.
A heron clothed in a Packers sweatshirt and black dress pants.
“Did you have a nice drive?”
“Not bad,” he said slowly. He tried to think of something else to say about it. Something normal and inoffensive. “We got through Chicago without hitting any traffic.”
“That’s good. Did you drive straight through?”
“We stopped overnight.” And shared a hotel room. And a bed.
Man, he really needed to escape this kitchen. He stood. “Hey, May, you need me to run out for cream, or—”
Allie lifted a container of powdered creamer from the counter. “We’ve got it covered, Ace.”
May made a helpless face.
He sat back down.
“That’s a long drive for you,” Nancy said. “And you must be missing work today.”
“It’s kind of a mobile job, actually,” Ben improvised. “I can take his calls anywhere, answer email, schedule appointments. These days, it’s all in the cloud.”
Nancy smiled uncertainly. “So were you and May friendly before, or …”
“Sure, we’ve been friends for a while.”
Six days was a while.
“But she’s only been in New York a few weeks.”
“A month and a half, Mom,” May said.
Nancy tilted her head. “That long?”
“That long,” May affirmed.
“I’d met her a bunch of times before,” Ben said, “when she came to visit Thor. Dan. I mean, we all hang out. Dan and … and …” Shit, what was the agent’s name? Something with a y on the end. Slinky? Alfie? “Skippy and me and May.”
“Andy?” Nancy asked.
