The following morning, when Esme awoke, she was on the floor beside the alarm clock. Rafe was nearby, cocooned in their olive-colored comforter. She traced an index finger across the outline of his face. When she reached his lips, she could feel his breath exhale against her fingertip.
She brought her finger back, leaned across the carpet, and kissed him. His lips still tasted like Dom Perignon. She slid her left hand inside his comforter cocoon and against his smooth belly—and he awoke.
“Morning,” she said.
He smiled, then grimaced, then frowned. “Where…?”
Befuddled, Rafe sat up and looked around.
“How did we get on the floor?”
“Gravity,” Esme replied.
“Ah.” He reached for the alarm clock and checked its results. “We’ve got five minutes.”
Five minutes later, Esme wiped the fresh sweat from her forehead and watched her husband wobble into the shower. Between her still-mutinous backbone and her upsy-daisy equilibrium, she required the leverage of the bed to help stand up, but once vertical she quickly donned her pink bathrobe and went about her day. Her first stop was Sophie’s bedroom. Unsurprisingly, her daughter was already awake, although still in bed, and was playing with a few of her dolls.
“Morning, peanut.”
“Morning, Mommy!”
Esme climbed into her daughter’s bed, and they spent the next ten minutes selecting the proper ensemble for Skipper to wear on her big date with SpongeBob SquarePants. Sophie herself was wearing her Bugs Bunny nightgown in honor of Easter, which was next week.
Soon they could smell the sweet aroma of Grandpa Lester’s flapjacks, and Sophie scooted out of bed and down the stairs. Esme tried to keep up as fast as her back would allow, but by the time she reached the kitchen, her daughter was already sitting down beside a steaming plate of sugar-sprinkled fried batter.
“Need some tomato juice?” Lester asked Esme, which was his oh-so-clever way of asking if she had a hangover, but she just shook her head and sat beside her flapjack-inhaling daughter.
“Don’t forget to breathe,” recommended Esme.
Sophie took a deep breath, then launched back into some more.
By the time she was on her second plate, Rafe joined them, dressed for work. He had his specs on, and the blue of his irises appeared misty behind the glass lenses.
“Top of the morning to you, squirt,” he said, and dove down to give his daughter a bear hug. He made his way to the fridge and poured himself a glass of tomato juice. Lester, still flapping those jacks, took note of his son’s beverage and let loose a rubbery smirk.
It was Rafe’s turn to drive Sophie to school, so while she scampered to her bedroom to change into her “daytime clothes,” he took the time to click on the TV and catch up on the latest hoopla. Unsurprisingly, the top stories were Governor Kellerman’s speech and the capture of Galileo in Kansas City. Few knew the two were related, but Rafe was one of those few. He glanced back at Esme, who was stuffing her face with Lester’s cooking.
How had he forgotten how special his wife was? Never again.
He chugged down the remainder of his tomato juice, kissed his wife, shook hands with his old man (because that’s what men do), and escorted his little blue-eyed angel out to the car. She was wearing her polka-dot dress today. He complimented her on it. He told her it looked resplendent. She complimented him on his tie. She told him it looked shiny.
Esme stood by the kitchen window and watched them leave. She felt like a wife again, and a mother….
“You going to get dressed today?” murmured Lester.
…and a daughter-in-law.
She wanted to remain in her bathrobe just to spite her father-in-law, but mindful of the impression that sloth might imprint on the old man, she wandered back to her bedroom, enjoyed the massage of a very long shower, and slipped into a casual white blouse and brown slacks. By now it was almost 9:00 a.m. She absently wondered what Tom was up to, how he’d made it home from the fundraiser (home for a field agent being a relative term). His motorcycle was still parked wherever the valets had put it. She and Rafe, in their impatient desire to rip each other’s clothes off, had forgotten it at Amy’s mansion. Esme made a mental note to ask Amy about it when she showed up.
In the meanwhile, it was puzzle time. She booted up the desktop and navigated to a Web site she’d recently discovered which offered user-created Sudoku