Run for Your Life (Michael Bennett 2)

I stood rooted there, speechless with visceral horror. My instincts had been all too correct. I should have fled when I had the chance.

Not one, not two, but three of my children were projectile-vomiting into the tub. It was like looking at an outtake from The Exorcist while you were seeing triple. I reared back as Ricky, Bridget, and Chrissy hurled again, each one’s upchuck triggered by the previous one, like they were trying to puke a campfire round. Think Vesuvius, Krakatoa, and Mount Saint Helens all going off in musical succession.

Before I could catch myself, I made the mistake of breathing through my nose. My stomach lurched precariously. I blessed my stars that I hadn’t had a chance to eat during the Harlem siege, or to get started on the ziti. Otherwise, yours truly would have chimed in a fourth eruption of his own.

My Irish nanny, Mary Catherine, was right beside the kids, her golden ringlets bouncing out from beneath a red bandanna as she mopped furiously at the blowback they left. She had wisely put on elbow-length, industrial rubber gloves and covered her face with another bandanna, but I could see from her eyes—usually crisp blue, but now damp and faded—that she was as exhausted as I was.

She gave me a quick wave, then pulled off the bandanna and said, in her lilting brogue, “Mike, remember before you left for work, I told you Chrissy was looking a little green?”

I nodded mutely, still struggling to absorb the enormity of the situation.

“I think that flu that’s been going around school has arrived,” Mary Catherine said. “Repent, for the plague is upon us.”

I crossed myself solemnly, trying to pick up her joke to make us both feel a little better. But a nervous part of me wasn’t entirely kidding. The way things had been going, maybe this was the plague.

“I’ve got it from here, Mary,” I said, taking the mop from her. “You’re officially off duty.”

“That, I most certainly am not,” she said indignantly. “Now, the Tylenol is in the cabinet over the sink, but we’re running out of cough syrup, and?—”

“And enough,” I said, pointing toward the stairs to her upstairs apartment, formerly the maid’s quarters. “I don’t need any more patients to take care of.”

“Oh? What makes you think you won’t get sick?” She folded her arms in stubborn loyalty, which I’d come to know well. “Because you’re a big tough copper?”

I sighed. “-No—because I don’t have time to. Get some sleep and you can take over in the morning, okay? That’s what I’m going to need.”

She wavered, then gave me a weary but sweet smile.

“You’re not fooling anybody,” Mary Catherine said. “But okay.”

Chapter 3

I MOANED along with the kids as the door closed behind Mary Catherine.

It’s not that I don’t love my children. I really do. But I’m the guardian of the kind of brood that would send Mother Teresa doctor-shopping for pharmaceutical assistance.

How’s this for the Bennett lineup? Juliana, thirteen; Brian, twelve; Jane, eleven; Ricky, ten; Eddie, nine; twins Fiona and Bridget, eight; Trent, six; Shawna, five; and Chrissy, four. A total of ten, count them: two Hispanic, two black, one Asian, and the rest white. All of them are adopted. Pretty impressive, I know. Not many families can field a multicultural baseball team, plus a bench player.

It was primarily Maeve’s idea. We started taking in her “stray angels,” as she called our gang way back before Brangelina got into the act. How could either of us have foreseen the nightmare of her death from cancer at the age of thirty-eight?

I wasn’t completely alone, thank God. Mary Catherine had appeared like a gift from heaven while Maeve was dying, and for some unfathomably merciful reason, she still hadn’t fled screaming. My crotchety grandfather-turned-priest, Seamus, was pastor of Holy Name Church, just around the corner. He’d wangled the job so he could help with the kids and disapprove of me, but the disapproval was a small price to pay for his help.

But it had been nearly impossible to take care of my young ones even when their mother was still alive and they were perfectly healthy. What was I going to do with the apartment transformed into a children’s ward at a hospital?

A thousand worries sprang up in my already stress-racked head. How was I going to get the well kids to school? What about taking the sick ones to a doctor’s office? How much sick leave did I have left? Had I paid this month’s health insurance premium on time? And what about the missed schoolwork? An image of the kids’ strong-willed, meticulous principal, Sister Sheilah, loomed in my mind like a specter.

I palmed my forehead and took a deep breath. I was a trained problem solver, I reminded myself. I could get us through this. It was temporary—a rough spot for sure, but a brief one. Like in any survival situation, the worst thing I could do was panic.

I bent down over Chrissy, my youngest, as she began to wail at the tippity-top of her lungs. Through her thin Backyardigans pj top, I could feel her burning up with fever. So were her copatients, Ricky and Bridget. They all started whining for ginger ale.

Me, too, I thought, searching around frantically for Mary Catherine’s spare bandanna. And let’s not spare the Jack Daniel’s.

Chapter 4

THE MAN IN the beautifully tailored, two-button Givenchy suit had finished his morning’s work with his usual expertise and speed. Many things in his life had changed since he had seen the truth—he was a new man now—but his superior intelligence and skills remained intact.

As he stepped into the garage of the stately Locust Valley home, he heard the lawn sprinklers kick on. He glanced at the black dial of his stainless-steel Rolex Explorer. Seven a.m. sharp. Excellent: he was running ahead of schedule, just the way he liked it.

He opened the gleaming door of the BMW 720Li, placed his Vuitton briefcase on the passenger seat, and swung his long, muscular legs under the steering wheel. As he adjusted the rearview mirror, he caught his own reflection. With his lean, brutally chiseled features, his razor-straight, collar-length black hair, and piercing, almost royal blue eyes, he looked like a model in a Vanity Fair ad. He smiled, showing himself his dimples and his perfect, gleaming white teeth.