He pressed a kiss against her forehead. "Yes, my dear?"
"There's something you should know."
"There are many things I should know, beginning with why your mother seems to, as you say, freak out every time Walter Bodkin's name is brought into a conversation."
"Well, yeah, we need to know that. Definitely. And did you notice Maureen? She went sort of ape herself, don't you think? Even her little pink pills couldn't disguise that she was—well, that she's hiding something. If we can't get Mom to talk with us tomorrow, she'll be my next move."
"Ah, Maggie, we're splendid together, do you know that?"
"Meaning? Oh. So you saw it, too. Maureen's reaction. Even for her, it wasn't quite right."
"Was there really any question that I would notice?"
"No, I suppose not. The great Viscount Saint Just is on the case. And, for once, I'm not arguing with you or telling you to butt out. But that's not what I wanted to say to you right now. I just think you should know something. Not all families are like ours. You know—wacko? They really aren't."
"Then those families must be exceedingly dull and uninteresting," Alex told her as they turned the corner on Thirty-seventh Street, heading up the sidewalk for one short block, to Evan's apartment.
"We're dysfunctional, textbook dysfunctional," Maggie pushed on, needing Alex to understand. "Doctor Bob said that to me, first thing. Although he'd be proud of the way I stopped myself when I started off on that tangent about being the unappreciated middle child—although finally putting at least some of how I feel into words, and saying those words to Mom, really was liberating there for a moment. But it was also petty. I'm learning, Alex, I really am. I'm a big girl now, and I have to accept my past, understand it, forgive it, and then move on. I can't just keep blaming my unhappy childhood for everything and never become my own person."
"And you made a great leap in that direction this evening, my dear, no pun intended. My felicitations."
"Yes, I think I did. And they love me. I know that, somewhere down deep inside. And I have to acknowledge that every hang-up I have can be pretty much laid at their doorstep, but if I believe that, then I also have to believe that anything good about me also came from them."
"A reasonable conclusion, yes."
"If I hadn't wanted so badly to get away from them, prove myself, I might never have gone to New York, might never have written one book, let alone all the books I've written. I might still be living here, maybe working in a bank, or something, and popping little pink pills, like Maureen."
"You're thinking that you might never have imagined me, aren't you, Maggie?"
She felt her cheeks grow hot, even in the fairly frigid breeze. "According to you, I've been imagining you since I hit puberty, in one way or another. Which is fairly disturbing. Like I've been looking for, and imagining, a white knight for most of my life. I'm an independent woman. A modern woman."
"A hopping woman."
"Now you're laughing at me," she said, pushing herself out of his light embrace and hopping ahead of him before turning about to face him once more—man, she was getting good on this walker. If they made walker-hopping an Olympic sport, she might just capture the bronze.
"Indeed, no. Don't you realize what you did this evening, sweetings? You took charge. In the usually daunting face of authority, in the face of the policeman's uniform, in the face of your mother's anger, your brother's usual ridiculousness, Cynthia Spade-Whitaker's cool condescension—I could go on—you stood tall, you stood your ground. You were, in a word, magnificent. A modern Boadicea. And all by yourself. Or may I take any of the credit? I'd like to think I could."
Maggie let him put his arm around her again. "It is nice, knowing you have my back," she admitted. "Does that give me a new problem—I'm nothing without a man?"
"I have no idea what that means," Alex told her. "Are you tired? I can carry you, you know."
Maggie looked at him, so handsome in the light from the streetlamp. He wore his long black cashmere topcoat with flair, as he wore every stitch of his clothing with flair; the creamy ivory silk scarf hanging loose around his neck setting off the perpetual light tan of his face beneath the wide, flat brim of his black hat that always reminded her of one worn by a young Clint Eastwood in those spaghetti westerns. Black leather gloves, his gold-topped sword cane—the man was, as they had said in the Regency, well set up, and definitely well put together.
On most other men, the clothes might look like a costume. But Alex was so self-assured, so comfortable in his own skin (and designer clothes), that all a person could do was be impressed. Damned impressed.
She certainly was impressed.
And he was going to be bunking in with Sterling, just as he had when he and Sterling had first poofed into her life. After a few lovely weeks of sharing her bed. Was she an unnatural child to think about that right now, rather than concentrate on her father's terrible problem?
Well, yeah.
But that's life.
Maggie looked up the block, to see that they were only two doors away from the stairs leading up into her father's building. "No, I can make it, thanks. I don't know about those steps, though. I might let you play Sir Galahad this time, and carry me up them, instead of me bumping up them on my fanny. Alex?"
He fell into step with her once more. "Hmm, yes?"
"I miss you."
She didn't turn her head to see his smile, but she could feel it.
"I miss you, too, sweetings. As incentives go, I believe being denied the pleasure of watching you fall asleep in my arms will go a long way toward the speedy resolution of your father's dilemma."
"You watch me sleep? Oh, God, Alex, don't do that. I probably drool."
"No comment, as I pride myself on being a gentleman. Which means, naturally, that I also refuse to mention the occasional soft snore."
"Bite me," Maggie said, and then hopped around in a half circle so that she had her back to the wide wooden steps. She lowered herself down, slowly, carefully. "Wanna neck a while before we go in? That is, my hero, do you wish to partake of a small, necessarily limited romantic encounter?"
"I thought you'd never suggest it," Alex said, sitting down beside her and pulling her into his arms. "You're more than usually beautiful in the moonlight, sweetings. Your eyes seem to shine with a special light."
She blinked once, and then smiled up at him. "It's not the moon, it's the streetlamp. But don't let me stop you. Tell me more about my eyes. And don't use any lines I've put in your mouth over the years."
"Never. Let's see," he said, trailing the tips of his fingers down her cheek. "Where do I begin? With the soft velvet of your skin ... the pertness of your perfect little nose ... the lush, sweet fullness of the most delectable lips I've—stay here."
"Huh?" Maggie opened her eyes as Alex rapidly stood up, unsheathing his swordstick and pointing it into the darkness beyond the circle of light cast by the street lamp. "Alex, what in hell are you—oh, shit ..."
"Google," Henry Novack said proudly, sitting in the street, perched on his stupid motorized go-cart. He wore a bright green nylon ski jacket over his considerable bulk, one with orange Day-Glo reflector stripes on the sleeves, and a huge orange woolen cap—with earflaps. He looked, to Maggie, like a cross between a duck hunter and the logo for the Orange Bowl parade.
"Google what?"
"The Google, the one on the Internet. All you need is a name. Okay, and a city helps. Evan Kelly. Ocean City. And up pops the address. I followed you here from there. Man, you move slow. You and me, Kelly, we're gonna deal."