Serious Moonlight(95)

“I doubt that.”

“Are you kidding? I’m about to burden you with a lifetime commitment. I can’t do this alone. This kid is going to need an aunt.”

I sniffled and laughed. “That’s insane. We can’t both be aunts.”

“We can do whatever we GD want, Birdie. I have to believe that,” she said, hands cupping my face. “And I need you to believe it too, because I really need a friend right now.”

I smiled back at her as a fierce sort of joy filled my chest. “Now, that I can handle.”





“To tell you the truth, I lied a little.”

—PI J. J. “Jake” Gittes, Chinatown (1974)





29




* * *



The next few days zipped by like the monorail on an overcast day. If I wasn’t busy reading pregnancy books with Aunt Mona, I was researching what I could about the Seattle Opera and texting with Grandpa—who was returning home this weekend. And when I wasn’t doing all that, I was working at the hotel, trying to stifle the urge to throw my arms around Daniel every time he passed through the lobby.

During one of our post-work pie breakfasts at the Moonlight, I told him about Aunt Mona’s baby. I checked with her first, and she said it was okay to tell him, as long as he kept it secret until she was ready to broadcast it. He was happy for her, but also freaked out about how she got pregnant.

“Whoa,” he said. “I guess life really does find a way, huh?”

“I thought that was fate.”

“So did I,” he murmured. “Dear God, so did I. . . .”

I wondered if I should get on the pill. Just as a double safeguard. I could handle aunt duty, but that was my limit right now. Maybe my mom was made of stronger stuff than I was. “You don’t want to know what happens when someone gives birth,” I told him, thinking of everything I’d recently learned from all those books Aunt Mona and I read. At this point, I was wondering how any woman ever in the history of time had survived childbirth. Better Mona than me.

By the time Friday rolled around, I’d gotten more used to the idea of Aunt Mona having a baby. My sleep had been more erratic than usual that week, so I was extra spacey, constantly nodding off for several seconds at a time. I never had to lay my head down, or anything. I just kept zoning out, constantly missing several words of any given conversation, which made me frustrated and unusually cranky. And that crankiness is what I blamed when Daniel and I got in a small tiff about going to the opera.

He was getting cold feet about trailing Darke there. He even suggested we should just drop the entire investigation: “We can find something new to investigate. There’s always something weird going on at the hotel. What about the animal rights group? Joseph says he’s almost positive he’s seen SARG members sneaking around the parking garage. Maybe they’re planning another banner drop or some other kind of publicity stunt.”

I didn’t care about the animal rights group. That wasn’t half as interesting as Darke, and besides, we were already committed. “Detectives don’t just give up,” I told him. “We can’t move from case to case without solving anything.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “But if I had to choose between regular Nick and Nora and Nick and Nora Go Wild—”

“You know the real Nick and Nora had both, right?”

“Birdie, my Birdie. I love it that you think they were real,” he said, mouth twisting up. “Fine. We’ll go to the opera.”

Sometimes when people say things, it’s easy to see that their mind is on other things. And that’s what I saw in Daniel. It bothered me a little, but so did a lot of things, including that stupid red-and-yellow framed print I saw in Darke’s house. Where had I seen it before? My mind wanted to connect to something I’d seen when I was younger—at the diner? In our old apartment? That wasn’t quite right. At first I thought maybe it was a logo, but blindly searching for it online only made my eyes swim with beaches and palm trees. Then I thought maybe it was the words below the sunset that had my detective whiskers a-twitching. If I’d only had a few seconds to view the print from another angle, maybe I could have read those words.

I wished I could forget about that stupid framed print, but I couldn’t. And on the night of the opera, on the ferry ride over to the city, I fell asleep in my seat and dreamed that I’d gone back to Darke’s house alone—only to look inside his glass windows and see them turn into the glass of a Houdini water torture cell, and inside, Daniel was drowning. I broke the glass, and as the water streamed out, I caught a glimpse of Darke’s sunset poster again—and tried to focus on the black, swirly mark that was blocking the sun. I saw something in that black mark! But when a foghorn blew in the soupy night air hanging over the Sound, I woke up and couldn’t remember what Dream Me had seen.

Maybe I was just obsessing over something trivial. I tried to put it out of my mind, which was easy to do when I stepped out of the Seattle ferry terminal and saw Daniel waiting for me. He was right about that suit of his. It flattered him. He was polished and pressed, and the suit fit him like a glove. His tied-back hair gleamed under the streetlights.

He was dazzling.

“Jesus, Birdie,” he said with tender eyes. “You look beautiful. Like a dream. Oh shit. Is this a dream? Let me count; hold on.”