This will completely throw Cross, the writer thought, fighting against a smile. He’ll never, ever see this one coming.
Chapter
26
I finally got home around nine forty that Saturday evening. Ali was already asleep, but Jannie was still up, eating strawberry ice cream and watching The Colbert Report, her favorite show, on TiVo.
“Hey, stranger,” I said, and kissed her on the forehead.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said. “Don’t you think Stephen Colbert is the fastest thinker ever?”
“He’s lightning quick with the comebacks,” I agreed. “But a guy named Johnny Carson could have given him a run for his money.”
“Who’s Johnny Carson?”
“Poor girl,” I said, feeling older by the minute.
“I got an A on my history paper,” she boasted. “And Coach says my times are really dropping in the four hundred.”
I bumped knuckles with her and said, “See? Good things do happen to people who work hard.”
She rolled her head to one side as if she didn’t want to agree, but she nodded, said, “I’m going to do that with all my classes and sports now.”
“Excellent move,” I said.
Jannie was a freshman and the transition into high school life at Benjamin Banneker had been a little rough at first. She hadn’t known how to handle the workload. It was nice to hear she’d figured out that working harder might help.
“Bree home yet?” I asked.
“Taking a shower,” Jannie replied.
“Ali and Nana?”
“Gone to sleep. Dad?”
“Yeah,” I said, going to one of the coolers that we were now using instead of a refrigerator and getting a beer.
“Did you notice that Nana Mama seems sad these days? I thought she’d be happy about the new kitchen and the addition. But today when she found out they were going to cut out the back wall in a few days, I thought she was going to start crying.”
“I think she will be happy once it’s all done, but this kind of thing, living in a construction site, and everything new and chaotic, it’s tough for a lady her age.”
“I don’t like other people walking around in our house.”
“Necessary evil,” I said, hearing Bree coming down the stairs.
The Colbert Report came back on, seizing Jannie’s attention, and I went to my wife and wrapped her up in my arms.
“You smell so good,” I said.
“And you smell so bad,” she replied, giving me a peck on the lips and then pulling back to head into the dining room.
“I’ll take a shower before bed,” I said, following. “Good day?”
“Tough day,” she allowed, getting herself a beer. “But we made progress.”
“You got hits on the AMBER alert?”
“No, nothing that positive, unfortunately. But we’ve got an artist’s sketch of the woman based on the descriptions the two women at the day care center gave us.”