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Olaf started moving things off the couch, so Nicky and I joined him. We each had an armful of toys and other baby debris, but now where to put it? Did we dump it on the floor with all the rest, or did we try to straighten some of it? I’m not the neatest person in the world, but I was overwhelmed with the mess in the room. It made me want to start shoveling things against the wall so at least the floor would be clear.
I whispered, “Where do we put it?”
Olaf put his armload in the corner to one side of the couch so at least it wasn’t making it harder to walk. I didn’t have a better idea, so I added my armload to his. The pile began to slide down like ice cream melting, and I couldn’t stand it. I went down on one knee to push at it and place things until there was some stability to the heap and it didn’t try to fall apart.
Nicky dropped the stuff in his arms behind the couch. I hadn’t realized there was enough room to do that. I thought about picking up another armload and putting it there, too.
Olaf whispered, “She’s returning.”
I stood up to join him by the couch. I had my hands clasped in front of me, because the urge to start trying to straighten more of the chaos was almost overwhelming. If I hadn’t thought the woman would have been insulted by it, I might have done it anyway, but I wanted information more than I wanted anything else from Ms. Gibson. Nathaniel would have been amused that anything could be messy enough to make me want to start picking up. It was usually he or Jean-Claude who started picking up before the rest of us even thought of it. That was about as domestic as Jean-Claude got before he paid people to be domestic for him, but Nathaniel enjoyed bringing domestic order out of chaos. I wondered what he would have thought of this.
; Ms. Gibson came back down the hallway with a baby in each arm. One was dressed in lavender and the other in yellow. They both had the beginnings of dark hair like five-o’clock shadow on top of their heads. Their big dark eyes looked like their mother’s, but the faces looked like someone else’s, probably the father’s, though there were no pictures anywhere, so that was just a guess. For all I knew, the twins could have been the spitting image of their grandpa. Genetics is like that sometimes.
Ms. Gibson had taken the time to put a lavender-and-yellow headband on each baby. There were tiny flowers and ribbons on the headbands. The outfits were equally girlie and pretty. It was the kind of stuff that most people reserved for baby photos or maybe Easter service at church. That’s to say, the babies looked great. They were pink cheeked and healthy and dressed as neatly as the mother. Apparently, on Brianna’s priority list, clothes ranked higher than housework. If the babies had come out as neglected as the living room, I’d have been upset, but they were smiling and happy, so I smiled back and let my parenting expectations go.
She glanced at each of them in turn, smiling, and they smiled back. “Who’re my beautiful girls? You’re my beautiful girls, aren’t you?”
The baby in yellow made noises back to her, and the baby in lavender joined in. It was gibberish, but I could have sworn it sounded like the same gibberish, as if both babies were speaking the same arcane baby language.
She talked to them as she put them in their bouncy seats. They gabbled back at her and to each other. Was it my imagination, or were they more solemn when they talked to each other? It was almost as if they smiled and talked to their mother the way she talked to them, like she was the baby and didn’t understand them.
“I’m going to get them a snack and myself a diet. Can I get any of you something?”
It took me a second to understand she meant she was getting herself a diet soda and not an entire diet, so Olaf answered first. “No, thank you.” His voice rumbled even deeper than normal.
It made me glance at him, but his face showed nothing. I wasn’t sensing his inner lion either. I shrugged it off and answered her, “No, thanks. I’m good.”
“I’m good. Thank you,” Nicky said.
She flashed us a dazzling smile that I’d have liked better if the makeup had been a little lighter. The smile seemed happy-girl-next-door; the makeup was more burlesque-stage. “Have a seat and let me know if you change your minds.” She went to the door and the toys piled against it weren’t an issue, because the door pushed inward.
We sat down where we were standing by the couch so that I ended up between the two men. Normally I liked being in the middle. I thought about making Nicky change with me so I wouldn’t be sitting next to Olaf, but it seemed too second grade. I was a big, grown-up vampire hunter, not a child, damn it. Nicky picked up on my unease and moved a fraction closer so that his thigh touched mine, and just that helped me find my center. I was debating if I could touch Nicky’s hand without Olaf getting weird about it when a small sound made me remember the babies.
They looked after their mother and then back at us. The one in yellow smiled at us, and I smiled back, because that’s what you do. Nicky smiled at them, too. The lavender twin smiled with us, and then the one in yellow looked at Olaf. It made me look at him, too. He wasn’t smiling.
If I’d thought he would think it was funny, I would have asked him what kind of sociopath doesn’t smile when a baby smiles at him? But I was pretty sure he wouldn’t get the joke. Luckily for all of us, the mother came back into the room. She sprinkled Cheerios across the trays in front of the babies and then curled up on the only other clean seat in the room, the corner of the couch beside Olaf.
It meant he could just turn his head and look at her, but I had to turn my entire body to see around him to get glimpses of her. If I hadn’t been wearing so many weapons, I’d have curled up on my end of the couch like she was in her exercise outfit. Olaf noticed the issue and sat straighter against the back of the couch so I could see past him.
“Now, Ms. Gibson—”
“Call me Brianna, please.”
“Okay, Brianna, how long have you and Jocelyn been friends?”
“Oh, since high school. We even went to the same college.”
“So, the two of you are close?” I said.
She sipped her can of Diet Coke and seemed to think about the question more than I thought it warranted. “We are. I mean, not as close as we used to be. I got married, and she didn’t, and then we had the twins. Marcy—Marcy Myers—and I got closer because we have husbands and babies. I know Jocelyn felt left out, but she didn’t want what we had. She’s not ready to settle down, and I’m not sure she ever wants kids.”
“It’s hard when some of your friends get married and start families and some don’t,” I said.
She nodded, sipped her diet soda, and said, “None of you is wearing a ring, but one of our friends is a cop, and he said that a lot of you don’t wear wedding rings to work. Are you the married friends or the single friends in your group?”
“Engaged and living with,” I said.
