springs eternal.”
He fake-pouted.
“Would having more sex make you happier?” she asked.
“Me? No. I was thinking of you.”
“You’re all self-sacrifice.”
Simon was still smiling at the memory when Sam said, “Whoa, Dad’s pancakes.”
“Yep.”
His face lit up. “Does that mean Mom’s gotten better?”
“No, not really.”
Damn. He should have thought of that—that his son would see him making pancakes and jump to that conclusion.
“It means,” Simon continued, “that she’d want us to do something normal and not just wallow.”
He could hear his own “Dad voice” falling way short of the mark.
“It isn’t normal when you make pancakes anymore,” Sam said. “It’s special.”
He had a point. He also ended up being both right and wrong. The breakfast did end up being normal—and special. Anya came up from the Fiske apartment and threw her arms around her father as though he were a life preserver. Simon hugged her back, closed his eyes, rode the wave for as long as his daughter needed.
The three of them sat around the circular table—Ingrid had insisted on round for the kitchen, even though rectangular fit better, because it “promotes conversation”—and even though two chairs were glaringly empty, it felt somehow, well, normal and special. Anya soon had chocolate all over her face and Sam teased her for it, and then Anya recalled how her mother called his breakfast concoction “chocolate with pancake chips.”
At some point, Sam broke down and cried, but that felt normal and special too. Anya slid off her seat and wrapped her arms around her older brother, and Sam let her, was even comforted by his little sister, and Simon felt the pang deep in his heart of Ingrid missing this moment between her children. He’d remember it though. As soon as Ingrid woke up, Simon would tell her about this moment, when her son looked for comfort from his little sister—his little sister of all people!—and she was able to give it, and one day, when Simon and Ingrid were old or gone, they’d still always have each other.
It would make Ingrid so happy.
While Sam and Anya did the dishes—family rule: whoever prepares the food doesn’t do the cleanup—Simon headed back to his bedroom. He closed the door. There was a lock on it, the kind of flimsy thing you install so your kids don’t walk in on you during an inopportune moment. He turned it and then opened Ingrid’s closet. Toward the back, there were six hanging bags with various dresses. He unzipped the fourth one, the one with a conservative blue dress, and slid his hand down to the bottom of the bag’s interior.
That was where they hid the cash.
He took out ten thousand dollars in wrapped bills and stuffed them in the backpack with the toothbrushes. Then he checked his phone to make sure that there was nothing important and headed back into the kitchen. Anya got changed for school. She gave her father another hug goodbye and left with Suzy Fiske. When he closed the door behind them, Simon had yet another of his imaginary conversations with Ingrid, this time asking her what gift they should get Suzy when this was over—a gift certificate to that dumpling place or a spa day at the Mandarin Oriental or something more personal like a piece of jewelry?
Ingrid would know.
He realized now that he was having these imaginary conversations with Ingrid all the time, running what he’d learned by her and seeing the reaction, even holding back the obvious question he wanted to ask her, the one that he and Elena danced around, the one that had been gnawing on him since this whole genealogy angle raised its ugly head.
He threw the backpack over one shoulder. “Sam? You ready?”
They headed down the elevator and grabbed a passing taxi. The driver, like pretty much every taxi driver in New York City, talked quietly into an earpiece in a foreign language Simon could not detect. That was old news, of course, everyone was used to that, but Simon wondered about the ridiculously strong family bonds of such people. As much as he loved Ingrid (and even had imaginary conversations with her), he couldn’t imagine a situation in which he could stay on the phone and talk to her or anyone else for hours on end. Who were these drivers talking to all day? How much must they be loved to have someone (or “someones” plural) who wanted to share that much news with them?
“Mom had a setback,” Simon said to his son, “but she’s better now.”
He explained.