The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,48

room. They’re probably all riddled with bedbugs. Or worse!”

“So much for the cocoon of safety. Thank you, Calvin.”

“Well, it’s not my fault. I was just trying to warn you. Did you know that bedbugs can lay up to five eggs in a day? And as many as five hundred in a lifetime? Since I switched to PBS, I’ve been watching these nature programs too. They’re fascinating! And kind of creepy. Did you know that . . .”

I had seen more than one roach during the course of the day, skittering away as their hiding places were revealed and disturbed. Here in the South we call them “palmetto bugs,” but a cockroach by any other name, no matter how cute and colloquial, is still icky. And though I hadn’t personally met any mice, they’d left enough evidence to suggest that I was not the lone mammal in residence. After going next door to borrow Felicia’s vacuum, I had banished every bit of dirt and dust from the bedroom, so I knew it was clean. But now, while Calvin continued on about bugs, his voice quivering with excited disgust as he vividly described some of the more horrific infestations he’d seen on television, I noticed a sizable gap between the floor and the lower edge of the door.

I put down the phone, rolled one of the two new bath towels I’d bought into a tube, and shoved it into the crack under the door, taking my time and making sure that the gap was totally blocked. Calvin was on a roll and so I figured he wouldn’t know the difference, but when I picked up the phone, I was greeted by silence.

“Calvin?”

“You just walked off and left me talking to myself, didn’t you?”

“Sorry. I was putting a towel under the door. There was a draft.”

And a crack big enough for a Central Park rat to crawl through.

“It’s okay,” he sighed. “I’m getting used to being ignored. Simon’s eyes glaze over every time I open my mouth.”

I frowned and tucked the phone in closer to my ear. “Everything okay between you two?”

“Yes,” he said. “I wish we’d had more time together before he had to go off on his next crusade, but what can you do? You can’t schedule a mudslide.”

“Maybe you should talk to him about taking some time off.”

“We’re fine,” he assured me. “It’s you I’m worried about. The yarn cave does sounds kind of fabulous, and it’s great that the neighbors pitched in to help, but you sound tired.”

“I am,” I admitted. “And maybe a little discouraged. How am I going to get it all done in only three months?”

“You will. You’re tough.”

“Sometimes I get tired of being tough.”

“I know,” he replied, the tone in his voice telling me that he really did know. “Maybe it will help to think about it as, well . . . kind of like labor. Nothing about this is going to be easy. You’re going to have to push, and push, and push yourself, maybe to the breaking point. But it’s going to be worth it because, in the end, you’ll get a whole baby out of the deal.”

“Eyes on the prize?”

“Exactly. Focus on where you’re going, not where you are. Do you want me to fly back down there? Simon will probably be gone for weeks. There’s no reason I couldn’t come and help.”

“None except the cookbook you have to edit,” I said. “What are you up to so far? Pies?”

“Pastry.”

“Only pastry?” I tsked my tongue. “You can’t come down here, Calvin. You’re on deadline. And I’ll be okay. Like you said, I’m tough. Also highly motivated. I’m going to get a whole baby out of the deal, right?”

“Have you thought about names yet? Because I have. Calvin is really an awfully nice name for a boy. Or a girl.”

“Shut up.” I laughed and took a cookie from the plate Caroline had left.

“But if you really did need me,” he said, dropping his teasing tone, “you know I’d come down there, right? Deadline or no deadline, I’d be there.”

He would, it was true. Which was why I couldn’t ask him.

“I’m good,” I said, forcing a smile. “Things will look better in the morning.”

“They usually do. Sleep tight, dumpling. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

He made a noise with his teeth that sounded like the skittering of insects.

“Gee. Thanks a lot, Calvin. I’m hanging up now.”

“Uh-uh. I’m hanging up now. Night, cupcake.”

“Night.”

I GOT OUT my computer and tried to watch Miracle on 34th Street but