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I reluctantly put my fork down and followed suit along with everyone else. After a se
cond, I peeked, scanning all the cute, solemn faces around me, and smiled.
It’s good to be home, I thought for the second time that evening.
“Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ Our Lord. Amen,” Seamus said.
“Especially the gravy,” I said.
“Amen,” everyone agreed.
CHAPTER 17
AFTER OUR HOME-RUN DINNER, Mary Catherine and I left Seamus and the big kids to do the dishes while we went out for a walk.
First stop was all the way down at Seventy-Ninth and Amsterdam, at this ice-cream place I was addicted to called Emack & Bolio’s. We got the ice cream to go and took the slow roll back to the apartment through Riverside Park.
It was a beautiful night, a little cool but clear, with a three-quarter moon shining up the silky surface of the Hudson off to our left. On the right were Riverside Drive’s famous whimsical, grand, rambling apartment buildings straight out of a New York fairy tale.
You couldn’t have asked for a more romantic moonlit stroll, which was precisely why I’d brought us this way. Mary Catherine and I had our ups and downs in the relationship department, but like I said, lately we’d become closer than ever.
As we walked, I glanced at Mary Catherine’s elegant profile beside me, the elfish upturn of her tiny nose, the pale of her throat. It was almost embarrassing how much I was feeling for her. Like a damn teenager.
She busted me staring at her a second later.
“Can I help you, Mike?” she said, smiling.
“I was just wondering how your exposé was going,” I said between bites of my peanut butter Oreo.
“My what?” Mary Catherine said.
“Don’t be coy with me, Mary Catherine,” I said. “I know you’re working on your nanny diary. I mean, that’s why you’ve stayed on all this time, isn’t it? To reveal all the juicy Sex and the City truth that is working for the family of a Manhattan single-dad cop with double-digit adopted kids?”
She gave me a playful shove as she rolled her eyes.
“Fine. You got me, Mike. It’s true,” she said with a mischievous smile as she spooned up her raspberry chip frozen yogurt. “In fact, just today I wrote a really juicy entry. Do you want to hear it?”
“Yes, very much so,” I said.
“Hope you’re ready,” she said. “It goes, ‘Dear Diary, I must tell you this. Today I went down into the steamy basement of my handsome employer’s luxury prewar coop.’ How’s that for a start? Juicy enough for you?”
“Oh, yes. Very mysterious and provocative,” I said. “Especially the handsome employer part. Please, by all means, keep going.”
“‘Upending the spilling sack in my aching hands, I stood there breathless, having never in my life experienced such a heaving sea as the one bared before my eyes. There they were in front of me. Fifty shades of gray…socks.’”
It was my turn to give her a playful shove as I started laughing.
“You naughty girl,” I said.
“‘As if in a fevered dream,’” Mary Catherine continued, “‘I finally tore my eyes away from the socks, lifted the bulging orange bottle of Tide, and slowly poured the thick liquid into the detergent dispenser. That is all for now. I will write more later.’”
“What!” I yelled. “Come on, don’t stop now. Dripping detergent? You can’t leave me hanging like that!”
Mary Catherine shook her head as she pointed her plastic spoon at me.
“Sorry, Mike, but like the rest of my adoring fans, you’ll have to wait for my book tour, when I’ll reveal the rest of the raw, steamy, stiletto-heeled New York City truth.”
CHAPTER 18
