“Damn it,” Paige said, leaning in to get a better look at the picture, knowing it was Matt despite her protestations. “You miserable piece of crap. What’s the matter with you?”
“Here,” Chloe said, returning to the kitchen and slapping a photograph on the table in front of Paige. “Think it’s just a look-alike now?”
Paige found herself staring at a larger image of the same photo.
“It was taken last summer at Pete and Sandi’s cottage. Matt liked it so much, he had it printed out. The smug bastard. You want to know how I found out?”
Before Paige could answer, the house exploded with the sounds of Chloe’s two children racing down the stairs and into the room. Chloe immediately closed the laptop.
“Mommy!” six-year-old Josh shouted, his mouth a carbon copy of his mother’s.
“I’m first!” cried four-year-old Sasha, proud inheritor of her father’s big brown eyes and deep dimples.
Those damn dimples,Paige thought. They were a dead giveaway.
“Take it easy,” Chloe said calmly, both children scratching at her thighs. “Have you said hello to Paige?”
“Hi,” said Josh, throwing the word carelessly over his shoulder.
“Hello,” said Sasha, always the more formal of the two. “We have a magic trick.”
“It was just on TV,” Josh said. “You want to see it?”
“I’m first,” Sasha protested, tears threatening.
“Can you show us together?” Chloe asked.
Josh and Sasha exchanged glances, Sasha being the first to concede. “Okay,” Josh said, looking from his mother to Paige and then back to his sister. “You ready?”
The children raised their right hands into the air, waving them up and down purposefully, as if they were wands. “Be a pear,” they intoned solemnly in unison. “To be amazed.”
“What?” Chloe said, a slow smile spreading across her cheeks.
“Be a pear,” they said again, even more seriously. “To be amazed.”
“Be a pear?” Paige repeated.
“I think you mean, ‘Be prepared,’ ” Chloe told them.
“No,” insisted Josh. “Be a pear.”
“To be amazed,” Sasha said, completing the thought.
“Okay,” Chloe said. “I’m a pear.”
“Me, too,” said Paige.
Satisfied, the children ran, shrieking with satisfied laughter, from the room.
“Am I wrong,” Paige asked, “or did they forget to show us the trick?”
“I think changing us into amazed pears was enough,” Chloe said, chuckling, and then immediately bursting into tears. “Oh, God. What am I going to do? My poor babies…”
“The kids will be fine,” Paige said. “Right now, it’s you I’m worried about.”
“How could he do this?”
“Because he’s a man,” Paige said, picturing Noah in bed with her cousin, “and men do stupid things. Tell me how you found out about this.”