“It looks like you’re having dinner with me, handsome man,” she told Spidey, walking back toward her own apartment.
“You’re a little young for shrimp still, so I guess I’m going to have to introduce Suro to the chicken and Andouille version of étouffée tonight. You think he’d like that?”
Spidey gurgled back, as happy as he could be despite his circumstances, and it broke Lacey’s heart to think of him ever being neglected.
She nuzzled her nose against his and caught a whiff of tangy body odor. It had obviously been a while since his mom had bothered to give him a bath. “But first I’m going to give you a bath in the sink, because you’re good lookin’, but you don’t smell too hot, little man.”
Spidey laughed, which made Lacey laugh, too, as she opened the door.
But then she broke off when she saw who was inside her apartment. Not just Suro, but Sparkle and Kenji, too.
And a smile about a mile wide broke out across her face.
However, Kenji answered her smile with a frown. “Whose baby is that?” he asked.
CHAPTER 16
IT was all Lacey could do to restrain herself from covering Sparkle with kisses. But while Sparkle tolerated her enthusiastic one-armed hug, Lacey knew not to push it too far. “I can’t believe you’re here! Wait, how did you get here?”
The thought of her taking a commercial flight and the TSA flagging her for using a dead girl’s ID, sent her into a temporary panic. “You didn’t fly here, did you?”
But then Suro said. “A friend of mine let me borrow his private jet. The hardest part was getting Sparkle packed at the last minute.”
“I like two weeks to plan out my packing list. Mr. Nakamura said I had two hours.” She rubbed her thumb between her middle and ring finger, which was what she did when a thought was making her anxious. “I’m afraid I might have forgotten something.”
“If you did, my father will buy it for you here,” Kenji told her. “Judging from this apartment, our income level is much higher than yours.”
Sparkled eyed her suitcase nervously, and Lacey decided to use an oldie-but-goodie distraction trick, one that would hopefully keep her daughter from checking and rechecking her suitcase for items she might have forgotten for the rest of the night.
“Are you taller?” she asked Sparkle. “You look taller to me.”
That drew Sparkle’s attention away from the suitcase. Ever since childhood, she’d been obsessed with tracking her own growth. “Yes, I’ve grown a quarter of an inch since you’ve seen me last,” she informed Lacey.
“And we’ve also composed the first aria for the opera,” Kenji said, as if the subjects were perfectly aligned.
This led to a long, two-person lecture about their opera and their plans for it and then they insisted on bringing out their electric keyboards to play what they had so far. “Without words of course,” Sparkle added. “Since we don’t have an opera singer.”
“Of course,” Lacey said. “I’ll just give Spidey a bath in the sink while you guys play.”
“It sounds much better with a full range of instruments,” Kenji informed Lacey as Suro helped them set up their electronic keyboards side by side. “We have a music room at our home in Miami. We should have Christmas there. Our house is much bigger than your apartment and the weather is better.”
Sparkle, whose friendship with Kenji was probably predicated on their matching inability to not take what the other said personally, nodded. “I would also like to spend Christmas in Miami.”
The truth was she and Sparkle might be in a new state soon after Christmas, starting lives under new names. But Lacey didn’t want to ruin the reunion, so she answered, “We’ll see, sweetie.”
She wrapped Spidey up in a fluffy towel, steadily ignoring Suro’s curious gaze, which she could practically feel poking at her. “We can order a pizza tonight, but we’re going to have to make a plan for Thanksgiving dinner. I was going to fix a turkey gumbo for Suro and me...”
That was as far as she got before all sorts of protests went up from Sparkle and Kenji.
“Why can’t you make a regular turkey?” Sparkle asked.
“Dad and I usually go to a sushi restaurant on Thanksgiving,” Kenji informed her. “We’re Japanese.”
They argued back and forth until Lacey put a firm stop to the argument, shooing Kenji and Suro downstairs so they could borrow one of the pack and plays from the nursery for Spidey to sleep in.
The next morning she woke up to the sounds of Sparkle and Kenji composing on their electric keyboards.
Lacey pressed a pillow over her head. “I did not miss this,” she said.
“This is the reason Kenji has his own soundproofed music room in our Miami home,” Suro said, his voice as dry as a desert.
She peeked out from underneath the pillow. “I still can’t believe you have a house big enough to include a music room, but you’re okay being holed up in my little apartment.”
“I’d rather be here with you than in my house alone,” he answered with quiet sincerity.
And it happened again. That heart melting feeling that made her want to tell him everything.
But then she spotted Spidey trying to break out of the pack and play. He already had a little chubby leg over the top.
“Spidey!” She scrambled out of bed to pick him up before he fell over the edge just as a knock sounded on the bedroom door.
“Dad, can we go out and buy Sparkle’s mom a piano?” came Kenji’s voice from the other side. “We need a clearer sound to compose this next part.”
“Where does he think I’m going to put a piano up in here?” Lacey asked, trying to disentangle Spidey’s hand from her locks, which he was once again trying to pull out of the pony tail she had them in. “There’s barely enough room to fold out the couch.”
“Perhaps a distraction is in order,” Suro said.
And thus, they ended up at the McCormick Tribune Ice Rink on Thanksgiving morning. Having now spent a full winter in Montana, Sparkle and Kenji were pretty much experts at getting around on the ice. But both she and Suro had to take turns with their respective children in order to figure out the basics of skating and keeping themselves balanced at the same time.
But at least Suro had skiing experience. He didn’t fall like Lacey had several times when Sparkle had been trying to teach her. And soon he was skating around the outdoor rink like an old pro.