One Small Thing (35 page)

She’d pulled off her nylons and got off the toilet, walking to the bed, dropping her clothes as she did. Five minutes. She’d sleep for five minutes and then go find Dan and tell him the whole story.

But even though he held her now as Daniel smiled up at Bill and Marian, Dan was too raw for the grand, ironic finale. She’d wait until he could hear what she had to say; she’d wait for Daniel to feel more at home, with all of them, his grandparents and neighbors, family and parents.

The air crackled with a gust of cooler air and leaves, and then the moment was over. Daniel rushed back into the pool, Luis spun Tomás in the tube, and Bill and Marian settled next to Isabel and Valerie and Jared around the picnic table. Dan still held onto her arms and she let herself lean into him, her husband she’d returned to.

“Aves, I think,” he whispered into her ear, “it will be okay.”

Avery watched Daniel holding his breath underwater as Luis counted, and she nodded. She wished she could say “Yes” out loud, but somehow, Mischa Podorov and Randi Gold had slipped between the two of them, and she knew she wasn’t ready. It would take a while for that sexy Georgian ghost to slink away, turning the corner with his jars and bottles of caviar and Stoli and dark red wine. Randi would be with them as long as Daniel was, but she wouldn’t always be standing before them clicking her long nails.

And Galvin Gold lurked somewhere, ready to spring out like more bad news. But Avery knew how to deal with that, hadn’t she? She’d finally learned something.

Avery closed her eyes. She would never have planned for this, listing this life onto controlled scraps of paper, organizing minutes and hours into this exact day to create the scene out by the pool. Slowly letting out the air she seemed to have gulped in the moment she first heard Midori Nolan on the answering machine, she listened to the long ago voice of her yoga teacher, finding the moment in her husband’s body against hers, femur, pelvis, shoulder, arm. Dan and her. Daniel, Isabel, Marian, Bill, Jared. Luis and Valerie and Tomás. The fullness in the center of her belly.