Step on a Crack (Michael Bennett 1)

Naked hope twinkled in her bright blue eyes. But where the heck was I going to put her? Our inn was filled to capacity. Then I remembered the maid’s room on the top floor; it had come with the apartment and was currently being used for storage.

“C’mon,” I said, grabbing her bag and walking her into the elevator. “I’ll show you where you’re staying.”

It took me a good twenty minutes to get the crib, baby toys, some old car seats, and Chrissy’s Barbie and Shawna’s Three Princesses bikes out of the small room.

By the time I went down to the apartment and came back with some sheets, Mary Catherine had the mattress unrolled on the steel-frame twin bed and was putting her stuff neatly into the drawers of the dresser we’d used for a changing table.

I studied her for a moment. She was in her late twenties. Though she wasn’t very tall, there seemed to be an energetic heartiness to her. Spunky, I thought, which was good, considering the job she was applying for.

“Nona didn’t happen to mention how big my family is, did she?”

“A brood, she said. ‘Quite a brood,’ I believe was the phrase she used.”

“How many is ‘quite a brood’? Where you come from?” I asked.

Mary Catherine’s eyebrows raised.

“Five?”

I shook my head, put out my thumb, and jerked it upward.

“Seven?”

I watched a ripple of panic cross Mary Catherine’s face when I motioned for her to shoot higher.

“Not ten?” she said.

I nodded.

“They’re all toilet trained, thank God. And they’re great kids. But if you want to walk away now or tomorrow or next week, I won’t blame you.”

“Ten?” Mary Catherine said again.

“A one and a zero,” I said with a smile. “Oh, and if you’re going to work for us, you have to call me Mike. Or idiot, if you want. But please don’t call me Mr. Bennett.”

“Okay, Mike,” Mary Catherine said.

As I left, I noticed that the panic seemed to have stuck in her face.

“Ten,” I repeated under my breath.

The perfect ten.

Chapter 8

DOWNSTAIRS, I couldn’t sleep a wink after I slid

in between the cold sheets of my bed. I remembered that tomorrow was Caroline Hopkins’s funeral, and that was yet another sad fact to consider tonight.

I lay in the dark, listening to the winter wind howl around the corner of my building. Somewhere, on Broadway probably, a distant car alarm started up, went all the way through its excruciating phases of electronic agony only to start up again.

For about an hour, I steadfastly refused to feel sorry for myself. I wasn’t the one whose body had mutinied. I wasn’t the one who had devoted my life to helping others for thirty-eight years—and for that trouble wouldn’t be seeing thirty-nine.

Then I started to cry. It came on slowly, achingly, like the first cracks of ice on a pond you’ve wandered too far onto. After a minute, my steely composure was shattered into a thousand pieces, and I was lost.

Originally, I had just gone along with my wife’s idea to adopt. After we found out we couldn’t have kids, I would have done whatever Maeve wanted. I loved her so much and just wanted to make her happy in any way I could.

But after we got Jane, I was a little reluctant to go on. Three kids in New York? Even owning an apartment was expensive, and it wasn’t like I was Mr. Moneybags.