Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(108)

Frankie: “Oh, thank God.” She leaned across and kissed Virgil on the lips and then turned back to Karel, and asked, “So . . . boy or girl?”

Karel smiled. “Well, folks . . . it looks like we’ve got one of each.”



* * *



—

Frankie was jubilant.

She was on the phone all the way back to the house, calling everybody she knew. Sam, her youngest son, a nine-year-old, met them in the driveway, and asked, “Well, do I get another brother?”

“You get a brother and a sister,” Virgil said, still stunned. “We got twins.”

“Holy shit,” Sam said.



* * *



—

Later, Virgil, Sam, and Honus the yellow dog were doing baseball fielding drills in the side yard, under the apple trees, Virgil with the bat, Sam at second, Honus in the outfield.

Virgil hit what might have been a Texas Leaguer, and the dog and the kid ran into each other going after it, tumbled into a pile, and Sam started laughing, and the dog ran around him, licking his face, and Virgil felt a surge of happiness so strong that he had to turn away.

At that moment, Frankie wandered out of the house, looking terrific in a loose hippie dress with flowers on it. She came over, stood up on tiptoe, nipped him on the ear, said, “I love you.”





ABOUT THE AUTHOR



John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of twenty-eight Prey novels, most recently Twisted Prey; four Kidd novels, eleven Virgil Flowers novels, and six other books, including three YA novels coauthored with his wife, Michele Cook.