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“Birds? Did you say famousbirds?”
“Yeah. You can vote online for which ones will be featured. Oh, should we do it? Let me find the website.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
She nudges me with her elbow, but I lift my leg over hers, trapping her deliciously close to my body. “It’s harmless and fun,” she says.
“There are people with serious bird phobias. Anyone with half a brain who watched Hitchcock will have developed one. This will give people panic attacks on the subway.”
“People aren’t that afraid ofbirds.”
“Oh, yes they are. Who came up with this idea?”
“The mayor’s office. Apparently it’s in honor of Small Birds Awareness Week. It says here domestic cats have decimated a lot of our small bird populations and ornithologists are trying to get their numbers back up.”
I close my eyes and slip my hand under her shirt, finding a bare hip. “Right. Well, I’m sure the Coalition for Worms and Bugs will have something to say about that. Their numbers have skyrocketed thanks to bird loss.”
Summer laughs, her tummy shaking beneath my hand, and I wonder how it’s possible to be so perfectly happy as I am in this moment. Not a twinge of a migraine, the darkness kept at bay by her sunshine.
I never want to leave this couch.
There’s a rustle as she turns the pages. Re-arranges her head placement on my arm. “Oh, Page Six!”
“It’s all garbage.”
“Yes, but it’sfungarbage.”
I snort. My mother and Summer could have a field day over that. What was said and what wasn’t was often the most important topic of discussion in the Winter household when I grew up.
“It’s pretty tame today. Oliver Langston publicly apologized for his affair.”
“Ridiculous,” I say.
“Why?”
I snort. “He should be apologizing to his wife, not to the people of New York. He didn’t wrong any of us.”
“Well, we don’t know how many other women he had affairs with,” Summer says. “Perhaps this was the most convenient way to apologize to them all. You know, saved on his phone bill.”
I laugh at that, brushing her hair away from my nose. “Imagine that.”
She reads on. But then she sighs, a soft, surprised “oh.”
“Another hypocritical politician?”
“It’s about your family.”
“So close enough,” I say. “Read it to me.”
“Well, it’s a public announcement of the upcoming nuptials between Isaac Winter and Cordelia Jacobs. There’s a bit of speculation here, too.”
“Read it to me,” I repeat.
She clears her throat. “One can’t help but wonder if the joining of the Winters and Jacobs families is a dynastic move of premeditated proportions. Not unlike, in fact, the Winter Corporation’s recent expansion to the Caribbean, where Robert Jacobs has built his famous golf courses. What came first, the chicken or the egg? The love or the business deal?”
I snort. “Clever.”
A rustle and soft thud as Summer puts the paper down. “I’m sorry.”
