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“He’s cutting a new tooth,” Helen said. “He was gone a month, and I feel like I missed so much.” She placed her hand lightly on his stomach, and he soon stilled.
* * *
Helen knocked on Annie’s door just before eight in the morning on the day before New Year’s Eve. Annie thought it might be one of the kids. They were both early risers and didn’t have good boundaries about the garage as a separate personal space. To them, it was still their backyard.
She opened the door, tired and cold and half asleep. “What?”
Helen held out a cup of milky coffee.
“What’s that for?”
“Kind of a good news, bad news situation,” she said.
“You need me to babysit?”
“No, nothing like that,” Helen said. “The good news is I got you a Christmas present. The bad news is I forgot about it until now.”
“And you had to wake me up to give it to me?” Annie asked, sipping the coffee. It was sweetened just right and not too hot.
“Well, he’s here to install it right now, so…” Helen screwed up her face. “Sorry?”
“What the hell kind of Christmas present needs to be installed at eighta.m. on a Wednesday?” Annie asked.
Helen laughed. “He’s from the phone company. They’re installing a line out here so you don’t have to cross the yard in the middle of the night if your little beepy thing goes off.”
Annie reached for her robe. “Okay, that’s a pretty good gift.”
“I know,” Helen said. “You can go lie down in my bed.”
“I will.” Annie was too tired to consider whether or not getting into Helen’s bed was a good idea. She slipped up the stairs, avoiding the man from the phone company and the children watching cartoons in the living room. She made her way into Helen’s bedroom and closed the door. She took another mouthful of the sweet, warm coffee, then set it aside to grow cold and crawled into Helen’s unmade bed. She pulled the covers up over her, breathing in Helen’s scent—one deep breath, two—and then she closed her eyes and fell asleep.
She woke up when Helen came in carrying the baby and Annie’s beeping pager.
She bolted upright. She’d forgotten the pager!
“It’s all right.” Helen tossed it onto the bed. “I’ve had it the whole time. It only just went off.”
“Oh my God, you’re so good to me.” Annie rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.
“There’s a phone on the nightstand,” Helen said. She put the baby down on the bed and turned to get a diaper.
Annie reached for the phone and then, seeing Zach start to roll, put her foot on his shoulder, holding him in place until Helen returned her attention to him.
The usual person picked up on the first ring.
“Hello, mysterious voice,” she said after she’d given her identification code words.
He chuckled. “Well, hello to you too.”
“What do you have for me?”
“You are to report to the Los Angeles office of the FBI Monday morning at ninea.m.,” he said.
“All right.”
“I also need to inform you that you’ll be receiving your orders through the FBI from now on. You need to continue to keep your pager on you at all times in case you need to be reached,” he said.
“So they can track me, you mean?” she muttered.
