“Damn right,” I called back. “Technically I have six legs now.”
Jokes aside, the more actual the twins felt, the more I nested, which I had thought was an old wives’ tale until I spent an entire afternoon arranging the onesie drawer in the room that was meant to be their nursery. Getting the house ready for the babies, everything folded and tucked in just so, was deeply soothing. All the questions that needed to be answered were nice ones, with no wrong answers—what color would be most restful in their bedroom? Did we want duckies or puppies for the wallpaper trim?—and because we’d decided not to find out the twins’ gender (so as not to blurt it out to the press, but also because it seemed like one of the last, great surprises a person might experience), I spent a lot of time in a pleasant haze of lemon yellow and pistachio green.
One afternoon, Nick and I were up in the Den of Secrets, him knitting and me rooting through Georgina’s things to see what I could add to the babies’ growing bookshelves besides her Little Women volumes and the tomes I’d brought back from Muscatine.
“I was sure I saw a Beatrix Potter anthology in here somewhere.” I stood back and squinted at the room’s uppermost shelves. “I bet I can see up there if I stand on her chair.”
“Absolutely not,” Nick said. “I cannot take you to the ER and explain that you fell because I was watching my pregnant wife climb up a bookcase in our sex den. I do not even need a baby book to know that.”
He put down the nubbly hat-adjacent object he was knitting and pulled over Georgina’s desk chair, carefully standing on it and running his finger across some book spines way at the top of her shelves.
“Oooh, The Adventures of Tintin,” Nick said. “Baby Pret A Manger and Baby Masala Zone will need these for sure.” He tossed them down to the ground, where they landed with a dusty thud. “Aha, here’s your Potter, poppet.”
“Thank you,” I said, leaning into the shelves on the left side of the room. “Look, Georgina has a hardback Betsy-Tacy anthology! She really didn’t throw anything away.”
“I wonder why she kept all her childhood books up here,” Nick said, hopping down and scooting the chair back to its home.
“Who knows why Georgina kept anything anywhere. Oh, The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat!” I shrieked, ripping that off the shelf. “This is great. When we were kids, all my parents’ friends gave us Bobbsey Twins books because, well, I guess that’s the joke you make when someone has twins. They’re pretty bad and I love them.” I hugged the book to me. “Thank you, Georgina. Hoarding wins again.”
Nick flopped back down on his pillows. “Promise me you won’t carry any of these downstairs by yourself,” he said. “Those stairs are treacherous enough without a pair of precious eggplants, or whatever size the babies are now.”
“Cauliflower, I think.” I knelt and opened the cupboard under the shelves. “Wait, I’ve done this one. It’s where I found her diaries.” I pursed my lips. “There’s still some other random shit in here, though.”
I reached in—the cupboard was deep; my arm went in up to my shoulder and I still barely grazed the back—and scooped out the various books and loose papers still rustling around in there. A complimentary 1984 wall calendar from the Royal Ballet had gotten caught on the shelf’s back corner, so I leaned in until I could grab it with the tips of my fingers and ease it out. As I withdrew my hand, I grazed it on something sharp.
“Ow!” I said, jerking my hand to my mouth and sucking on the wounded knuckle of my thumb. Something had poked me.
“You okay?” Nick asked.
“Just a scrape. There’s something back there. I can’t…” I reached in more carefully and felt along the sides of the cupboard until my fingers hit a metal circle on the right-hand wall.
“Is your tetanus shot up to date?” Nick wondered.
I ignored him as I felt the contours of whatever had bit me. It had a jagged ridge in the middle.
A keyhole.
I sat back hard and looked up at the bookshelves, which were designed to look like three separate cases side by side, but were actually a built-in single wall unit. Each section had multiple shelves up top, and the lower right and left sides had cupboards, while the middle section between was merely decorative.
Or so I’d thought.
I turned around frantically until I saw the pillow I’d been using as a treasure chest. My hands shook as I unzipped it and fished around for the letters. The key was still there, folded up tight inside them.
“Nick,” I said, holding it up. “What if…?”
He squinted at it and then brightened. I reached inside the cabinet and felt around until I could position the key against the lock. The key slid in and let me turn it with a neat click.
“Nothing happened,” I lamented.
“Oh yes it did,” Nick replied.
I pulled my head out of the cupboard and saw that the allegedly decorative panel had popped open like a giant file drawer. It was crammed full of stuff, typical for Georgina. There was a huge photo album, overstuffed with what looked like news clippings and pictures, and an old Chanel shoebox with a photo taped to the top of it. I lifted it out and recognized its subjects immediately: In a room I couldn’t identify, Georgina, probably in her early twenties, sat on a stool, the sort of industrial metal number you’d see in chemistry labs, smiling widely at the camera in a slinky black cocktail dress. Behind her, holding what looked like a remote trigger for the camera in his hand, a handsome young man gazed down at her with absolute naked adoration. His other hand was smoothing a wayward piece of her hair with
