Chapter 1

"Daddy, Daddy!"

Danny — Danielle to my mother and the people in the Registry of Births office, but Danny to everybody else — yelled as she leaped off the last step of the bus and tore across the lawn, home from another day of kindergarten. Molly Benton, also five, had jumped off at almost the same time, nearly knocking Danny to the ground as she ran around the front of the bus and across the road. Danny's older sister Elizabeth, meanwhile, followed the two more sedately, as befit a girl in the fourth grade. Kindergarteners! They were so childish. Anna Benton descended the steps with even more casual indifference, probably looking forward to next year, when she'd be on the junior high and high school bus with her three older siblings.

As I hustled the girls up the long driveway, I looked back over my shoulder and saw the bus pull away. Across the street, Melissa Benton was putting her girls into her idling pickup. I found myself wishing that I too had thought to bring a vehicle down to the end of our driveway. The leaves on the trees along the Brandywine River had just started falling in earnest in our part of Delaware, and this change in the weather was likely to be the last one before winter. The winters had actually gotten a little warmer since we moved here eight years ago, in 2013, but not so much that I ever really looked forward to them.

"So," I asked when my little women were all settled in the living room with their snacks. "What did you do today in school?"

Danny took a seat in my lap and launched into a stream-of-consciousness story about what had happened to Jane in the morning, and then what Bobby did to her a little later, and then how Mrs. Williams made Bobby apologize and put him in timeout, and then how she and Kate and Denise did their art class together, and on and on. I was exhausted by the time she was done and turned to Beth for relief.

"So Tuesday's okay, right?" she asked.

"Okay for what, sweetie?" I smiled.

"You said you'd come, daddy," she started to tear up. "You said you would."

"Of course I will, Beth," I said, slowly putting together the pieces. All of the kids in Beth's class had been asked to have one parent put in an appearance at some point during the semester for a "career day" kind of thing. This — reminding me on Friday that it was my turn on Tuesday — was Beth's idea of advance notice. On Monday, she'd probably tell me we needed to bring cookies. Well, on Monday her mother would be home, and she could bake the cookies.

"I'll be there," I smiled. "Nine o'clock on Tuesday morning."

"Why are you going to her school, Daddy?" Danny asked with a pout. "Why not my school?"

I looked over to see Beth rolling her eyes.

"I'll come to your school some time, too, sweetie," I told her. "Beth's class is having mommies and daddies come in to explain what they do for a living."

"What do you do, Daddy?" Danny asked.

"Daddy's a writer," I told her.

"What does Mommy do?" she asked.

We all looked up at the sound of the door opening.

"Aunt Julie!" Danny cried, squirming down off of my lap and running to greet the woman who was closing the door behind her. Setting down her computer case before she was bowled over, Julie bent down and hoisted little Danny in the air for a hug and a kiss. Julie was not really a relative, but she was Danny's godmother. And anyone who knows my family knows that that relationship is one we take very seriously. Particularly since Julie was the only person we knew who ever actually went to church. Beth collected her hug and kiss as well, by which time Danny had returned to my lap with an expectant look.

"So what does Mommy do?" Danny reminded me.

"Mommy's a lawyer, just like Aunt Julie," I smiled.

A look of horror spread over Danny's face as she shifted her gaze from me to Julie and back to me again.

"What's wrong, sweetie?" Julie asked her. Danny looked like she was about to cry.

"Mrs. Stockbridge said that Billy McGoldrick was a horrible little lawyer," she blurted out, "and she put him in timeout for the whole afternoon."

I just stared at my little girl, my mouth twitching.

"Aunt Julie, are you okay?" Beth asked. I looked over to see Julie lying on the floor, desperately trying to suck in air as tears started to run down her face. She waved us off.

"Aunt Julie will be fine," I said. I couldn't resist another quick look at the attractive brunette writhing on the floor in her fancy lawyer suit. Particularly since the fancy lawyer suit was showing an awful lot of her stunningly beautiful legs. No, no, back to my daughters.

"I think that Mrs. Stockbridge meant that Bobby was a liar, honey," I told Danny. "Not a lawyer. It's very unlikely that Bobby McGoldrick has been to lawyer school. Plus your mommy is a very good lawyer. So is your Aunt Julie."

"Not as good as your mommy is, honey," Julie said. "Your mommy is the best trial lawyer on the East Coast, Danny. I'm just a small-town lawyer trying to make a living..."

Her voice trailed off and Beth, whose empathy went way beyond any gene contributed by either her mother or her father, walked over and sat down next to her.

"Since Uncle Go-Go died," Beth finished Julie's sentence as she looked into Julie's eyes and reached for her hand. "We miss him, too, Aunt Julie."

"Thanks, dear," Julie hugged Beth to her. It had been almost a year and a half since her husband, Danny's godfather, had died at the obscenely young age of 30 after a two-year battle with cancer. Only in the past few months had Julie's eyes started to look free of the pain that she'd endured for the last four years.

"So are you a good writer, Daddy?" Danny demanded from my lap.

"Pretty good," I returned my attention to her. "I still have to ask Mommy to correct my grammar and proofread my books before I send them off to the publisher."

"You can do that with Spellcheck," my smartass ten-year-old said.

"Some of it," I said. "Mommy finds all of Daddy's typonyms, though.

"What's a typernym?" Danny demanded.

"Typonym" I corrected her. "It's when you type one word, but you mean another word. But they're both words, so Spellcheck doesn't tell you that the word you typed is the wrong one."

"Like what?" Liz was a skeptic about everything except the omniscient computer in her room.

"Like if you type b — o — a — r — d when you meant b — o — r — e — d," I said, keeping my smile to myself. It still wasn't the right time to tell them about the time that their mother had asked, while reviewing my first novel, if I had meant to imply that one of my characters was frigid.

"No," I'd answered, a little annoyed. "I meant to imply only that she was bored with sex. Why?"

"Because you spelled it b — o — a — r — d," she'd told me. "Board with sex."

She'd managed to read for another page before my laughter proved too much for her and she joined me on the bed in our small New Haven apartment. Nine months later, more or less to the day, Elizabeth entered the world. We still referred to her as our little board game, usually in private but occasionally in front of her. According to the current explanation, we meant that she was lots of fun, but sometimes she was tricky and hard to figure out.

"Your daddy's a wonderful writer," Julie was not about to let my self-deprecation go unchallenged. "Three Edgars and a genius award? 'For reinventing and reinvigorating the comic detective novel?'"

"I want to be a writer, too," Danny said fiercely. "Do you have to go to writer school?"

"Well, not writer school," I said. "But probably you'll have to do well in high school and college."

"And then," Julie teased me, "right before you take your CPA exam, you find you have this novel inside that's exploding to get out. And while your wife is in law school, you write it, and it becomes a bestseller. And then you write three more of them. All about Joe Average."

Her eyes twinkled as my eyebrows shot up into my forehead.

"You didn't think anybody'd gotten that yet, did you?" she chuckled.

"Actually, no," I said. The character of Joseph Anthony Verage had appeared in all of my books, and at least once in each book I took pains to have him sign his name as "Joe A. Verage." But before now nobody had remarked on my private little joke. It wasn't that I completely disliked detective fiction. My problem was with the novels about the psychiatrist or college professor or, God forbid, lawyer who solves mysteries on the side. Once? Sure. A whole series? Give me a break.

As Julie had pointed out, it was while I was studying for my CPA exam after college that I finally gave vent to this frustration and created Joseph Verage, by day a substitute English teacher, by night a substitute bartender. A man who, despite his best efforts to fill his free time by coaching youth soccer and having his friends arrange memorably disastrous blind dates, finds himself sucked into a murder mystery that he'd just as soon ignore, with clues swirling about him like a tornado. It was a lark, and I was stunned not only when it was published, but when my publisher claimed the public was clamoring for a sequel.

But that, I pointed out, would violate the whole point of the satire in the first place. You didn't see a sequel to "A Modest Proposal," did you? Satire, shmatire, they'd said; look at the sales. Finally they simply offered me an advance so large that I couldn't turn it down. So what had become a satire quickly became a series of farces, with the situations growing more and more outlandish, and the outcomes more and more unlikely. Outlandish and unlikely to the point that I was now working on the first book of a new four-book contract.

Even my wife, who read every single book and actually did correct my grammar before they were sent out, had never divined the significance of Mr. Verage's name. Or had never mentioned it to me if she did. It was entirely possible, I now realized, that she just didn't think it was that funny.

Still, Julie was the first that I knew of to "get it," and I happily admitted it.

She smiled triumphantly.

"When will Mommy be home?" Danny interrupted our little compliment festival to ask.

"Tomorrow morning," I told her. "Mommy had to fly to California."

"More zitions?" Danny asked.

"More depositions," I agreed as Julie giggled.

Both girls soon lost interest in the world of writing in favor of the world of television. I hated using the boob tube as a babysitter, but since I was alone tonight, I needed a little time to get dinner ready. I would read to both of them after dinner, or, if I could get Julie to stay that long, she could read to Danny while I kept Beth informed of the most recent doings, at least to her, of the wizard Harry Potter. We were still on the second book in the series, written way back in the 1990s. It would be a good while before we got to the most recent, Harry Potter and the Assisted Living Community of Forgenroth.

Julie sneaked in with me to help with dinner, and I asked her what was new in her life. She stepped back to make sure she couldn't be overheard.

"My porn king died yesterday," she said matter-of-factly.

"I'm sorry," I coughed. "Did I know you had a porn king?"
"My porn king client, of course," she smiled. "I brought you some to look at."

"Porn?" I smiled. "I don't need no stinkin' porn."