Step on a Crack (Michael Bennett 1)

“DAD!” they said at once.

How could they have gotten themselves ready? I thought. What a bad father I was. I hadn’t even remembered about the play. I didn’t know why I started crying when I stooped to pick up Froot Loops off the linoleum. Then I did know.

The kids being able to take care of themselves felt like Maeve had done her job. Like she had tied up all the loose ends and was now ready to go.

I wiped my tears on the sleeve of my robe as Chrissy hugged me hard and gave me a butterfly kiss by fluttering her eyelashes on my neck.

A deep breath helped me pull myself together. If Maeve saw me cry in front of them, she’d kick my ass.

And so, I felt a joyful smile invade my face when I looked at them again. My kids really were angels. They were completely unreal. I nodded at Julia and Brian. Had anyone, let alone a couple of kids, risen to a horrible occasion with such selflessness? I gritted my teeth to kill another wave of sorrow; then I cleared my throat.

“I know it’s not Sunday,” I yelled with enthusiasm, “but who needs a Sunday breakfast as much as me?”

The cries of “We do” and “Me” rang off the walls as I slapped two cast-iron frying pans up on the stove.

Seamus arrived in the kitchen as I was dispensing my bacon, egg, potato, and green onion hash to my guys.

“Ock. Faith and begora,” he said, glaring wide-eyed at the costumed kids. “Halloween already?”

“NO!” the kids cried, giggling at their grandfather.

Mary Catherine came in a minute later, a quizzical look on her face. I handed her a plate.

“I warned you we were nuts,” I said, smiling.

For a few glorious seconds, I just stood at the stove, staring out at my family, listening to them eat and laugh. My bliss lasted until I spotted my cell phone and keys on the counter next to the coffee machine.

Damn world, I thought. I wished it would just lay off already.

I thought of the hostages and how the clock was ticking against them. It was the hostage-takers themselves that finally got me to uproot myself and head for the shower. I smiled bitterly as I felt the heavy, black resentment in me shift away from myself and toward them like the cannon of a tank. Jack was the one responsible for taking me away from my loved ones, I realized.

You don’t know who you’re messing with, buddy, I mentally e-mailed him. You might think you do. But you have no idea.

Chapter 55

THE BENNETTS STOPPED some NYC traffic again when we did our morning dash for the front doors of Holy Name half an hour later. A brunette model crawling out of a taxi in a sequined black dress, no doubt worn the night before, stopped at the curb, put her hand to her décolletage, and actually said, “Ohhhh!” at the cuteness of my family pageant. Even a passing metrosexual in a GQ camel-hair overcoat couldn’t help gaping open-mouthed at my crew as he exchanged his iPod earpiece for his ringing cell.

And far better than both of those reactions was the one I got from none other than Sister Sheilah.

“God bless you, Mr. Bennett,” she called with a smile, an actual smile, as she unhooked the door.

I was feeling pretty warm despite the cold when I got back into my van. I decided to sit for a minute. I lifted the Times I’d picked up from my doorstep to look at it for the first time.

The spark of holiday joy fizzled instantly in my chest when I looked at a picture of myself under the first lady caroline hopkins’s funeral hijacked headline. “We Don’t Know Anything” was the cheerful caption under my picture. I looked at the byline of the hatchet job.

Cathy Calvin.

Who else?

I shook my head, and I felt my stomach filling with acid. She’d hamstrung me but good. Even the picture was bad. There was a pensive, searching expression to my face that could easily be misinterpreted as utter confusion. They must have snapped it when I was looking for the cathedral caretaker.

Thanks for my fifteen minutes of fame, Calvin, I thought. You really shouldn’t have. I couldn’t wait to see Commander Will Matthews. It was going to be such fun receiving the commendation for the top-notch PR job I had done with the Times.

And on that note—this case just kept getting better and better, didn’t it?—I violently hurled the paper over the seat and downshifted into drive.

Boy, oh, boy, was I glad to be in the white-hot center of this mess.

Chapter 56