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“No, of course not. How silly of me. It’s an expression that means Aunty might be late.” The kind of late that meant Amelia probably wouldn’t get near the park today unless Halsey took her.
“We can play the game with the three cups here.” It was absolutely fine to teach your tiny cousin how shell games worked. The shell game was the basis for any con, and every child should be taught to look out for grifts.
He shifted Amelia to his other knee and took two identical brass buttons and three red Dixie cups from his drawer. Sometimes late at night, when he was having difficulty juggling fake facts and adding things up in a bulletproof way, he practiced the sleight of hand he’d been taught as a kid. There was a soothing rhythm to it.
He palmed one button without Amelia seeing it and put the other under the middle Dixie cup, making sure she knew it was there. Amelia bounced on his knee while he shuffled the cups. She knew exactly where the button should be, because his movements were slow and deliberate, but in lifting the cup she tapped her finger on, he extracted the button and presented her with an empty space.
“No,” she said, eyes agog. “It was there.”
“You have to watch carefully.”
“You cheated on me.”
He laughed. “Yes, I did, but you have to catch me.”
That’s when Lenny appeared in his doorway and what caught was a hot arrow of want in his chest.
“There was no one at the reception desk,” she said.
Lenny did this to him, messed with his expectations and continually surprised him, and he hated surprises. They made him say irrelevant things like, “I don’t know where they all are,” when he meant to say, Hi, I’m really glad to see you. Please may I kiss you?
She tugged on her jacket. “I should’ve made an appointment. I was walking this way and never mind, I can see you’re busy, I’ll go.”
“Don’t go.” He was looking at her over the top of his reading glasses like he was the professor and she was his deadline-missed, day-late, excuse-short student. He took them off and got the right line out. “I’m glad to see you. This is Amelia.” He pulled one of Amelia ringlets. “This is Lenny.”
“That’s a boy’s name,” Amelia whispered in her outside voice.
“We need to work on your whispering. It can be a girl’s name, too. It’s short for Lenore,” he said.
Amelia squinted at Lenny. “She doesn’t look short to me.”
Lenny smiled. “I think you’re busy.”
He handed Amelia a pink highlighter and put a pad in front of her. “Don’t go.”
“Is she yours?”
Ah, that was what was making Lenny look unbearably uncomfortable. She thought he’d kept having a daughter from her. “Amelia is my cousin. I’m babysitting.”
Amelia shook her curls and continued drawing with the highlighter. “I’m not a baby. I already told you.”
Lenny leaned against the doorjamb. “You should listen when women talk, Uncle Halsey.”
“Yeah,” said Amelia. “My mom says men have trouble doing listening.”
“Outnumbered and outflanked,” Halsey said.
“Girls are better,” Amelia said.
“Girls are better,” he agreed, watching Lenny. And then the cavalry arrived in the form of Camille, looking flustered.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I got held up. Dentist, whitening. Where is everyone? Hey, Amelia, would you like to come to reception? I could do with your help answering the phones, and we could have some stra
wberries.”
Amelia turned in Halsey’s lap. “Are you going to talk about boring things with Lenny?”
“I hope so,” he said, focusing on Amelia and not Lenny, in case she balked at the boring things, too. “You’ll like strawberries better.”
