A dozen days since his parents left, and Evan was thinking of changing his number. Though if his siblings couldn't hassle him via text, they'd switch to email or Facebook messages, and eventually to postcards or carrier pigeon. There was no way to permanently block them.
The hell of it was, it wasn't even the domestic bliss Ben accused him of enjoying, much less Chloe's cruder interpretation of his daily life. Most mornings he was out the door before Natalie opened her eyes. He'd wake and head to the guest bedroom, where he could shower and dress without disturbing her. He was at his desk by seven, and many evenings she was with clients until seven, or if she was home when he got in, she was shut into her insanely messy home office, writing listing copy or pulling together comps or transcribing the handful of notes she scribbled on the backs of her business cards over the course of the day.
A couple of years back he'd tried explaining his job to his nephew Marcus, who, okay, was maybe seven at the time. He'd still been put out when Marcus seemed disappointed by the details, because he thought being a banker meant Evan got to carry stacks of money around in his briefcase. Living with Natalie was teaching him that his conception of her job was just as wrong-headed. And she never stopped working. It was hard to entice her to step away from her computer and into his arms, even if he poured her a glass of wine first.
So Alice's message in the sibling group text, asking if he and Natalie were too busy k-i-s-s-i-n-g for him to make New Orleans reservations, was just irritating. He wished he was ignoring the entire state of Louisiana in favor of kissing. Instead, he just hadn't caught Nat long enough to ask her about it.
The twins would be forty-two in late August, and everyone was supposed to go to New Orleans, where Chloe lived, to celebrate. They'd originally planned a big fortieth birthday reunion, but Danny's twins were toddlers, and Chloe was transitioning to a new position, so it was inauspicious timing. The next year, Ben and Tara had gotten a great deal on a vacation package, so they'd left Marcus with their grandparents and hopped on an Alaskan cruise. Everything worked out for this birthday, though, and Evan didn't expect he could get out of it. His parents wanted him to bring Natalie. And Chloe had gone outside the group message to warn him that if he dared to bring his girlfriend to her birthday weekend, she would play Shrek movies in their parents' suite every time the cousins vegged during group hangout time.
Despite their ten-year age difference, he and Chloe had shared plenty of moments of solidarity about being the single ones. Chloe's twin, Ben, had been the first sibling to marry, but Alice hadn't been far behind, plus she'd had Lizzy right away. Perhaps a little too right away, but that was neither here nor there. The point was, over the prior dozen years, Evan and Chloe had watched their siblings become increasingly domesticated, and agreed that the only reasonable course was to maintain the balance of wildness in the Lee clan, no matter how many of their staid siblings became domesticated. Alice and Ben and Danyal said he didn't know what he was missing.
Evan had known perfectly well what he was missing: nothing.
Except his perspective had shifted. Not much, not to the point that Chloe feared, but enough to put her pricklier teeth in play. He'd thought of confessing his and Natalie's arrangement to Chloe, but she would blab. And not be nice about it, either.
So he hadn't booked a flight to New Orleans, because he wasn't sure if he should reserve one or two seats. He didn't want to explain Nat's absence to his folks, but there was no reason to put her through the Lee clan wringer. She'd had enough of that just knowing his parents. And there was a huge difference between putting up a few online images and spending a couple of nights trapped in a hotel with fourteen of his closest relations.
He uncorked a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and poured a couple of glasses to carry upstairs as he went to hang his suit jacket. In the guest bedroom he paused, disoriented. Granted, he didn't spend a ton of time in the room itself, but he was sure there had been lamps on the bedside tables. And an abstract orangish triptych on the wall above the dresser.
When he knocked on her office door, wine in hand, her face brightened and she shut her laptop. "I am officially done for the night. I think you've turned me Pavlovian. I heard you head up and my mouth started watering."
"That sounds promising," he said, stealing a kiss before handing her the glass.
"For this," she said, taking a sip. "It turns out I would rather drink than review closing work for the Takedas."
"Slacker."
"Guilty as charged. How was your day?"
He laughed. "Put an apron on and say that again. I want to send a video to Ben."
"Sure. And after that you can kiss my ass."
"With pleasure." He savored the dark oak and blackberry bite of the wine. "Have you eaten?"
"Nope. You?"
"Nope. How about I order something?"
"Does that mean I can take off my bra and collapse on the sofa for an hour?"
"At least."
"Cool. I want Korean. Something spicy. And soup."
"On it." He pulled out his phone and told it to search for menus as he followed her down to the living room. He started to put his wine glass on the side table but came up short. It wasn't there. "Where's everything gone?"
Natalie glanced up from where she'd curled herself into the cushions. "Everything?"
"Yesterday I thought all those throw pillows on the bed were just shoved aside, but I didn't see them today either. And the spare room has bare walls, and there's nowhere to put my wine."
"Put it on the sofa table."
"Okay, I understand there is actually a flat surface that can hold it. Just not the flat surface I expected." He handed over the phone so she could add her menu items to the cart. "Does your house have a poltergeist?"
Her crooked canine caught her bottom lip as she refused to answer.
"Maybe the furniture is sentient?"
"No. Relax, Evan. It's not a ghost. Do you believe in ghosts?"
He shifted his jaw. He wasn't going down that road. "I don't believe in haunted houses."
"Listen to you obfuscate." She gave him back the phone. "I was staging the Bryant's house, and needed some decor to make the photos look better. I'll bring it all back after the open house on Saturday."
"Thirty-five minutes until dinner. Do you do that a lot?"
She shrugged. "Sure. It's SOP. Sometimes we place bets."
"Explain." He sat and she stretched out to rest her feet in his lap.
"Say I'm going to a realtor's open house for one of Patti Robertson's listings. I'll bet Ricardo that Patti's gilt mirror and fern terrarium will be in the house. He'll counter with her Queen Anne side chairs."
"What do you win?"
"Bragging rights, mostly. Sometimes a round of drinks. If we both get it right, we have to send Patti's listing to clients and prospective clients until someone takes the bait. First one to schedule a showing wins."
"I had no idea real estate was such a cutthroat sport."
"Ha, ha. I will say, I didn't know I had a competitive streak in me until I got into this business. Fallout from being an only child. Mom always let me win."
Evan said, "I hated board games growing up. Even things that should have been based more on luck, like Chutes and Ladders, never went my way. And when my parents insisted on the others giving me a fair shot, they did it while making a lot of noise about not upsetting poor little Evan, or offering me blatant and patronizing deals. If I took them up on their offers for an extra roll of the dice or discount Get Out of Jail Free card, they would exchange these knowing looks and say things like, 'The real second-place winner is Alice.' Jerks." He hadn't thought about those hours sitting around the coffee table with his siblings in a while. Once he'd aged enough to hold his own against them, they'd been holiday visitors instead of residents in the Lee home, and board games had taken a backseat to time in the kitchen or playing with the babies.
"Remind me to challenge them to a game of Whoonu someday. I have mad stealth skills at Whoonu."
Well, it was an opening. "How would you feel about that someday being next month?"
Her foot twitched, but otherwise she didn't betray any surprise. "Your turn to explain."
He started massaging her instep. She spent her time with clients in heels, and was a sucker, he'd found, for a foot rub. "Next month is the twins' birthday, and we're all meeting in New Orleans for the weekend to celebrate. My folks, all the siblings and spouses, the kids. And you, if you want. I know it's too much. I can come up with an excuse."
Her eyes were closed, and Evan studied her expression. It was hiding everything. "Would we have to do organized activities, or is this more of a free for all?"
"There's a party, of course. Saturday night, but otherwise people go their own ways except some meals. I promised to take Marcus and Jane to see the insect museum, which Laurel and Rowan might want to get in on. If they do, Danny or DJ is coming with me, because their kids are bonkers." Rambling. He kept rambling. "I love them, but managing two four-year-olds in a room full of preserved beetles? No, thank you."
"You'd take all those kids but not Lizzy?"
He was impressed she'd tabulated his nieces and nephews. "Excuse me, it's Lizzy who won't go. She's at an age when associating with her sister is beneath her, and that means no associating with Marcus, either. Certainly not for something as gross, she claims, as a bug museum."
"More fool her. The Insectarium is amazing. Did you mention the butterfly garden? It doesn't hold a candle to the one at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, but it's sweet."
"Hang on." He pulled up a link and texted it to Lizzy, along with a note that he wouldn't make her eat any crickets if she came with him. He started to type 'them' but backspaced, not wanting to leave room for interpretation, even in his own mind, that Natalie would be part of the bug-watching crowd. Correcting his aim to set his phone on the sofa table instead of the missing side table, he said, "So what do you think? What excuse should we use to get you out of this overexposure to the Lee family and all of its offshoots?"
She sat up, shifting her feet to the ottoman so she could lean against him. "I guess I'd better go along. What if someone arranges a moonlight cemetery tour or a ghost walk through the French Quarter? You'd be all scared, and Ben would sneak up behind you and shout, 'boo,' and you wouldn't have anyone to protect you."
She could be so snide. He kissed her. "I never said I believe in ghosts."
"No, Bruiser, you sure didn't. You sure didn't say one way or another."
The best defense being a good offense, or so his football-obsessed niece claimed, Evan took advantage of the fact that she'd tossed her bra towards the laundry room on her way downstairs. When the delivery guy arrived with dinner, she had to huddle under her throw blanket to keep her voluptuous flesh away from public view, but she didn't ask him any more about his beliefs about the supernatural.