Walking back downstairs, he heard music playing softly, one of the obscure female folk groups Natalie liked. He followed it to the living room, found her on the couch, feet tucked girlishly beneath her, a magazine on her lap. She looked up as he walked in and gestured to a syrah on the coffee table. “The kids good?”
He nodded, poured, sat down at the other end of the couch. “Sometimes I can’t believe we made them.”
“Our best work.” She held up her glass, and he clinked it. The wine was full and rich. He sighed, rolled his head back, and closed his eyes.
“Long day?”
“I started in San Antonio.”
“Someone you were chasing?”
He nodded. “A woman. Programmer.”
“Did you have to kill her?” Natalie looked at him steadily. She’d always been blunt, to the point that people sometimes mistook her for cold. In truth, she was one of the warmest people he had ever met. It was just that she had the honesty of someone with nothing to prove. That was part of what had drawn him to her, all those years ago. He rarely met people whose thoughts and words and actions so closely synced.
“She killed herself.”
“And you feel bad.”
“No,” he said. “I feel fine. She was a terrorist. The computer virus she was working on could have killed hundreds—maybe thousands—of people. Crippled the military. Only thing that bugs me is…” He trailed off. “Sorry. Do you really want to know?”
She shrugged, the ripple of her trapezii graceful beneath her thin T-shirt. “I’ll listen if you need.”
He wanted to tell her, not because he was troubled by Vasquez’s death or because he needed Natalie’s benediction, but simply because it felt good to talk, to share his days with someone. But it wasn’t fair anymore. They’d always love each other, but it had been three years since the divorce. “No, I’m okay.” He sipped the wine. “This is good. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
The room was warm and comfortable, scented with cinnamon from a candle on the coffee table. Outside, the rain fell soft and steady. A gust of wind stirred the trees. He wouldn’t stay long—they were good about boundaries—but it felt nice to sit in this sanctuary with his children asleep above him.
Until Natalie took a tiny sip of wine and then leaned forward to set the glass on the table, swinging her legs to the floor. She took a breath and folded her hands in her lap.
Ahh, shit. “What is it?”
Nat glanced at him sideways. “You know, that used to drive me crazy. Just because you can tell I’ve got something on my mind doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shut up and wait for me to get to it.”
“As I recall, there was an upside to me being able to read your body language.”
“Yes, Nick. You were very good in bed. Better?”
He smiled. “What’s on your mind?”
“It’s Kate.”
He stiffened, immediate paternal protectiveness leaping, the part that would always fill in the worst possible ending to any statement that began, It’s Kate. “What is it?”
“She arranged her toys today.”
It was such an innocuous statement that he almost laughed, his head full of all the sentences he’d imagined: It’s Kate, she fell down and hit her head. It’s Kate, the neighbor has been touching her. It’s Kate, she has meningitis. “So? She likes things neat. Lots of girls do.”
“I know.”
“You like things neat. Look at this place.” He gestured to the framed photos, dustless and aligned, to the square edges of the rug and the couch, to the basket on the coffee table that organized remote controls. “She’s just trying to be like Mom.”
Natalie stared at him for a long moment. “Come with me.” She stood and started for the arch into the kitchen.
“Where—”
“Come on.”
Reluctantly, Cooper rose, bringing the wineglass. He followed her through the kitchen to the sunroom that doubled as the playroom. Three walls were glass; on the fourth Natalie had painted a mural, a scene from The Jungle Book, the big bear Baloo floating on his back in a river, Mowgli lying on his chest. She was a capable artist; she had once filled notebooks with sketches, back when they had been teenagers who thought love was a noun, a thing you could possess. Natalie flipped on the overhead light. Todd’s side of the room was chaotic, the lids of toy bins open, a train under attack from a stuffed panda, an unfinished Lego creation that might one day be a castle.
Kate’s side was neat as a surgery. Her toy box was closed, and the spines of her picture books looked as if they’d been aligned with a ruler. A low shelf held dolls and stuffed animals—Raggedy Ann, a brontosaurus, a plastic crocodile, a boxy fire truck, a stuffed Goofy missing an eye, a parrot, Tinkerbell, a pudgy unicorn—all in line like a Marine formation.
“I get it,” he said. “It’s neat.”
Natalie made a short, sharp sound. “Sometimes I don’t understand you, Cooper.”
It was never a good sign when she called him by his last name. “What?”
“You have these amazing abilities. You can look at someone’s credit card statements, what books they’ve read, their family photo album, and from that know where they’ll run, what they’ll do. You can track terrorists across the whole country. Can you really not see this?”
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Doesn’t mean—aren’t you the one who says that if you want to understand how abnorms think, all you need to know is that the whole world is patterns? That all the rest of it—whether a gift is emotional or spatial or musical or mathematical—is secondary to the fact that brilliants are more tuned in to patterns than everybody else?”
“Let’s just give her some time. There’s a reason testing isn’t mandatory till age eight.”
“I don’t want to get her tested, Nick. I want to deal with this. I want to figure out what she needs.”
“Nat, she’s four. She’s imitating. It doesn’t—”
“Look at her stuffed animals.” Natalie walked over and pointed, but her eyes stayed on him. “They’re not neat. They’re alphabetical.”
He’d known that, of course, had spotted it the moment the lights flickered on. But his little girl, tested and labeled? There were rumors about the academies, the things that happened there. No way would he let Kate end up in one.
“Look at the spines of her books,” Natalie continued, relentless. “They’re arranged by color. And in the spectrum, from red to violet.”
“I don’t—”
“Kate’s an abnorm.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, a simple statement. “You know that. Probably for longer than I have. And we have to deal with that fact.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe she is a twist—”
“Not funny—”
“—but maybe she’s just a little girl whose father is one. Maybe it’s not you she’s imitating. Maybe it’s me. Or maybe she does have a gift. What do you want to do? Test her? What if she’s tier one?”
“Don’t be cruel.”
“But what if she is? You know that means an academy.”
“Over my dead—”
“So then—”
“I’m saying that we need to deal with this. Figure out what her gift is and help her explore it. She might need help, tutoring. She can learn to control it.”
“Or maybe we could leave her alone and just let her be a little girl.”