ten

“Did someone say legs?” Charlie joined us on the porch. “I’m a leg man, myself.”

We were an odd group, the three of us. I had dated Charlie, and now I dated Frank. Charlie had been so close to Teddy they’d considered themselves brothers, yet Frank was Teddy’s actual brother. It’s a miracle we hadn’t self-combusted into a fiery ball of jealousy. Although this was all new, we seemed to have gravitated toward each other in the past year, and I expected we could work quite well together going forward. And Charlie was right. He knew women’s legs.

I flipped to the page of the mystery woman.

“Here’s what caught my ear.” I ran my pencil along the woman’s calf. “Marissa said the pants were snug at the bottom.”

“Stand up, Ce,” Charlie instructed. I rose, and he pointed to my bootleg Levi’s. “Those are out.”

I looked down. As if Levi’s could ever be out of style. “Seriously?”

“When you get your clothes from a Dumpster, there’s a good chance it’s not hot off the rack,” Charlie said.

Frank laughed.

“So tight is in?”

“They’re called skinny jeans,” Charlie said. “All the girls wear them.”

“Girls?” Frank said.

Charlie smiled. “You’re good, Frank.” He leaned into the sketch. “Let’s just say, this chick’s not forty.”

“What do forty-year-old woman wear?” I asked wondering what I’d be wearing at fifty since, according to Charlie, my fashion sense was a decade behind.

“Yoga pants,” Charlie said. “Why don’t I buy you a pair now, and we’ll put them away for a few years before you can wear them. I’ll even take the tags off and wash them a few times so you don’t feel like you’re cheating by wearing something new.”

“Very funny,” I said as I sat back down and crossed my dated legs.

“So are we ready for our road trip?” Charlie asked.

“Where are we going?”

Charlie tossed Frank the Gremlin’s keys.

“I want Charlie to see the warehouses,” Frank said. That made sense. Charlie, an MIT dropout, had two specialties—debugging computers and bugging women. Hopefully, Frank’s interest stopped at Charlie’s computer expertise.

Katrina’s stomach made an appearance on the front porch three seconds ahead of her body. She was at the point in her pregnancy where the front of her skirt hem was shorter than the back. A temporary condition, I had assured her.

“I’m coming with,” she said and produced a plate full of jelly sandwiches. “Dr. Grovit just called for you.” She handed me a sandwich. “Go call him back while we’re eating. We’ll wait.”

Dr. Grovit picked up on the first ring. I heard papers shuffling in the background, the beginnings of an avalanche.

“It’s CeCe,” I said through a mouthful of strawberry jelly.

“I have an idea,” he replied, bypassing chitchat. “Why don’t we look up your father’s lab assistants from the late 1990s? That’s when your procedure took place. Your father was very particular about his assistants. I have to assume a few were familiar with the comings and goings in the lab.”

“By goings, you mean where my eggs ended up?”

“I do.”

I filled Dr. Grovit in on Lifely. There was silence at the other end of the line.

“I remember the Lifely scandal,” Dr. Grovit admitted. “I didn’t realize your father was involved with the fertility center. On the bright side,” he rationalized, “the lab assistants might be able to debunk your suspicion. I’ll do some digging on my end and see who I can locate. At least now we’ve got a name, Lifely, to float to the assistants.”

A scab had formed on my finger. I picked at it until I felt a pinch.

“Okay, see what you can find.”