TWENTY-SEVEN
“This!”
“Ow,” I mumbled. Jess’s shriek was nearing supersonic.
“This is why we wouldn’t ask you to be their godmother!”
“I didn’t do anything! I am innocent and, also, I’m the one who found the little jerks. Twice!”
“Little? We’re almost as tall as you are,” the girl snapped.
I shrugged that off and turned back to Jess. “And what are you talking about, ‘wouldn’t ask’? You’re not going to ask? You’re not gonna name them and you’re not gonna assign godparents?” I couldn’t tell which one I found most appalling. Wait, I had it now. The one about me, definitely.
“This is not about soothing your insecurity!”
Aw, come on, not even a little? She could soothe me if she really tried. “Don’t you remember me telling you how horrible the future was?”
“Vividly,” she muttered, trying—and failing—to run a hand through her hair. She had it pulled back, and slicked back, so it wasn’t budging for a while. When the screaming started, we all assumed the positions: Sinclair and Tina off to one side, watching with polite dispassion; Marc pulling back so DadDick could step up (for a hug; he knew better than to try to run soothing fingers through her hair); and me cowering by the sink. “The whole thing is still very, very vivid. Mostly because you wouldn’t shut up about it.”
“It was awful but fascinating. It’s hard to picture me not being with Jessica like you said in the old timeline.” DadDick gave his wife a squeeze. “I’m sorry there’s no more Christian Louboutin to make your favorite shoes, but at least there’s us and the babies.”
I bit my lip so as not to let out something less than charitable (“You could have a thousand weird babies and none of them would replace Louboutin’s genius, flatfoot!”) and tried to stay on point. “Yeah, like I was saying, the future sucked hard and long—”
Jess slammed her hands over the girl’s ears. “Not in front of the babies!”
“Ow, my tympanic membranes!” The riled teen shook her off. “Mama!”
“She’s in all the advanced classes,” her brother confided. “It’s fine, Mom. We’ve heard this story a hundred times: You Almost Never Existed except for Onniebetty’s Blundering. And she’s said way worse than ‘sucking hard’ and—”
“Enough,” Jess warned, and her son closed his mouth: zip!
How? How is this my life?
“I was tyrannical and gross and Sinclair was mysteriously absent and you were, too, and there were zombies, icky, drippy, rotting zombies, but remember how wonderful BabyJon was? Oooh, and handsome? Not that good looks measure goodness or anything but it’s still worth noting. He was gorgeous. Because of me! Okay, because of the Ant and my dad, genetically speaking, but he was confident and strong and sweet because I raised him to be like that! So how come I can’t be their godmother? If the spawn of the Ant can turn out terrific, your li’l sprogs can, too.” Also, what exactly were the responsibilities that came with godmotherhood? I should probably get a detailed job description before I got further invested in being hurt that I wasn’t being offered the job. The girl seemed savvy about footgear, so clearly my work with her had borne fruit, but the boy was a trickier read, though his fondness for Cinnabon and Orange Julius was a huge point in his favor. They were fearless and funny, which was even better. And maybe I was supposed to, I dunno, guide them spiritually? Or whatever? “Give me one good reason why it wouldn’t work.”
“I’ll give you six. Vampires. Zombie—no offense.”
Marc let loose with his “none taken” sigh. I admired how he didn’t point out that the house zombie had safely delivered her weird babies.
“Ghosts. Dads who aren’t dead. Dads who are dead. And—how many?”
Her twins each held up one hand, fingers splayed wide.
“We can help you out with that list if you like, Mama. Number six—”
“Traitors!” I clutched my chest. “Argh, your betrayal burns. Why? Why would you turn on your Onniebetty?”
“Because you ratted me out two years ago when I spent the night at—never mind.”
“Look. Betsy.” I could see Jessica visibly trying to calm herself. “I love you. There’s not much I wouldn’t do for you, but you’ve got to admit. You—and by extension we—live a dangerous life. Someone outside that, someone who knows about the craziness of our lives but who isn’t necessarily exposed to it all the time, that’s who we need to look after the babies in case the worst happens. If something happens to us”—gesturing to DadDick—“the last thing we should do, no matter how much we love the people involved, the last thing we should do is plunge our children further into the supernatural cesspool that is your life.”
“‘Cesspool’ is a little harsh,” I mumbled, wanting to keep being offended but aware that she had a damned good point. Dammit.
DadDick stepped forward and took my shoulders in his giant cop hands. Here comes a “stop it, you’re hysterical!” slap. He doesn’t even care that I’m not hysterical. He just wants to get to the slap. Police brutality in my own kitchen!
“Betsy, I know this will be hard to hear.”
“Because you’ll slap me so hard my ears’ll ring?”
“What? No. This is hard to hear because . . . are you ready? This is not about you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Exactly.” He gave me a noisy smack on my forehead. Better than a slap, but also more confusing.
“If, God forbid, something dreadful happens . . .”
Both twins waved their hands. “We know, we know!”
“Shush.” Jess spoke affectionately, if absently, and they obeyed. “Your mom’s on deck.”
“Jeez.” I wasn’t happy about this at all, and still wasn’t sure where DadDick was going with the “it’s not about you” crazy talk, but this was their decision and I had to respect it. And she had a point. My mother would be a wonderful guardian, but she wasn’t far from retiring. If someone blew up the mansion one night in a blaze of bitchy retribution and the little ones somehow survived, Mom would be responsible for three babies at a time in her life when she would have been looking forward to grandchildren. She was always happy to baby-sit BabyJon, and she’d been over quite a bit to see the twins, but at the end of the day she knew the children weren’t her responsibility. Except someday they could be.
Which, in an unsettling way, made Jessica’s point. An elderly, single college professor was their best option. That’s how nutty our lives were.
“I’m going to sulk about this,” I warned, “for the rest of the week at least. And I’m going to do all sorts of passive-aggressive crap, like accidentally pouring all your nail polish down the kitchen sink and leaving you to deal with the mess. And the ensuing lack of polish.”
“Agreed.”
We glared at each other for a few seconds, then mutually looked away. A draw.
Meanwhile, sensing the worst part of the crisis was over, the girl had taken notice of Marc, who’d been watching the events with interest and in uncharacteristic silence since Jessica had listed him as a reason why I wasn’t the twins’ godmother. She must have picked up on that (before I did, but that wasn’t such a trick) because she flopped down into the chair beside him with the air of someone supremely comfortable with her surroundings.
Marc tried a tentative smile. “Hello.”
“Good job delivering us when Mom couldn’t get to the hospital in time.” This with a sideways glance at her mother, who suddenly couldn’t return the gaze. Ha!
“Thank you. But everyone helped; it wasn’t just me.”
Well, phooey. Stupid Marc and his humane desire to play fair at all times.
“Hiya, Unk.” The boy waved at him from across the kitchen, where he’d been chatting with Sinclair.
“Hello. Glad you and your sister aren’t missing.”
“That’s all boring now. We’ve solved it.”
“We haven’t, actually, and you guys haven’t explained how—”
“Yeah, yeah, how about this?” She leaned right into Marc’s personal bubble, cupped her hand around her mouth, and whispered in his ear. (Good trick, too; I couldn’t hear a thing despite eavesdropping.) His green eyes widened, then narrowed, and then he was on his feet and backing away. “No. No! Don’t. I don’t care. Don’t you dare. I can wait. Do not tell me how The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring end.”
“But the dragons finally—”
“No!” the zombie screamed and clapped his hands over his ears.
“Too bad.” Jessica’s awesomely evil daughter sighed. “It’s pretty spectacular.” She caught her brother’s gaze and giggled, and then we were all laughing. It was the sharp-edged laughter that was this close to tipping over into hysterics (DadDick might yet get the chance to smack me), but we indulged anyway. It was impossible not to, and reason #742 why I loved where I lived and who I lived with.