Chapter Nine

"Well! That is certainly interesting," Greenlee commented, peeking out Kendall's expansive front window at Zach's retreating back. "So tell me, Kendall, why do you fritter all your talents away on junior when senior is such a hunk and could probably teach you a thing or two besides?"

"Shut up, Greenlee, and lay off. You sound just like Zach. Now let me go get Miranda before she rolls off the bed."

"What? Zach's made a play for you? You never told me! Spill!" Greenlee followed Kendall into the bedroom.

"There was nothing to tell, Greenlee. Zach was just insulting me, that's all. It was when he was trying to split Ethan and me up so Ethan would leave town and not find out he was a Cambias. C'mon, Miranda, that's the way…oops." Kendall's nose wrinkled in distaste.

"You don't need to tell me what that means. Miranda's through with her breakfast."

"Aren't you the ace detective. Will you please make yourself useful and bring the diaper bag in here?"

"Tell me the rest of the story first."

Kendall rolled her eyes. "There's nothing to tell. Zach told me the next time I wanted a real man to give him a call. Just one of the many reasons he's a disgusting pig."

Greenlee marched over to the bed and held out her arms. "Like father like son? Here, give me the baby. You get the Pampers. I need to practice my technique."

"Your technique? What are you talking about? You're not—"

"No. Not yet. Now hand her over."

"Fine. Here." Gingerly placing Miranda in Greenlee's arms, Kendall returned with the diaper bag, whose flap opened up into a makeshift changing pad. Somehow, between the two of them but with Greenlee doing the majority of the work, they got Miranda changed into a fresh diaper and disposed of the used one. When they were finished and Miranda was gurgling happily, they took her back in the living room and sat her on the sofa.

"You're not really equipped for baby visitors, are you Kendall?" Greenlee asked. "No crib, no playpen, no changing table, no highchair. No food, I'll bet, except whatever you filched from Myrtle's."

"What are you, the baby expert all of a sudden?" Kendall asked sullenly. But Greenlee was right, and Kendall was beginning to realize it—which was not improving her disposition. Miranda's impulsive removal from Myrtle's was beginning to seem more and more like a harebrained idea.

"Didn't you notice the expert way I handled that diaper change? Ryan and I are trying to get pregnant, you know. We're even been taking childcare classes, so we'll be ready. We've run into some problems, but we're not letting that stop us."

"Please. Too much information, Greenlee."

"At least one of us has a maternal instinct, Kendall."

"Even a barracuda has a maternal instinct, Greenlee."

"Let's not start this again. Look, it's just a good thing I came by when I did—I love seeing my little cousin and she's happy to see me again too, aren't you, Miranda, especially after the way Auntie Kendall hauls you around? If Auntie Kendall gets tired of watching Adventures In Babysitting on Pay Per View, Cousin Greenlee would love to take over."

Glumly, Kendall said, "Hopefully, she won't be stuck with either Cousin Greenlee or Auntie Kendall for long because Auntie Kendall is about to wrap a Pampers around Cousin Greenlee's neck and I don't think Miranda has any to spare."

"That's why we keep bickering, isn't it, Kendall? Because it's better than crying?"

"We're bickering because we always bicker, and I'm not going to cry," Kendall vowed. "Because Zach expects me to be weak. He thinks I'm just going to accept that—that the hand of God just swooped down and grabbed that plane out of the air, or that the mountaintop opened and swallowed it whole, but I'm not! That's why he thinks he's going to get away with it, but he's so wrong—"

"Whoa, Kendall…whoa," Greenlee cut her off. "Don't start that again, please—it makes you sound obsessed and paranoid, and it makes it sound like there's no hope! Don't you dare destroy my hope," she added fiercely.

"Don't pin this on me, Greenlee. Zach is the one who's done that, and your precious Ryan thinks he could have done it. I'm not the only one."

"Ryan thinks Zach could have done it but that's not the same thing as thinking he did do it. You have to ask yourself why Zach would want to harm anyone on the plane, especially when he either loves Bianca or he sure fooled Myrtle into thinking he did, and Ethan is his own son…oh, that's right, Ethan, now I get it, this is a rerun of the argument we had last night. Ethan's all good, therefore Zach's all bad. I'm sorry, Kendall, but I think I should take Miranda home with me and Ryan."

"What?" Kendall demanded. "I know I'm going to be sorry I asked this, but how did you get from Point A to Point B on that one?"

"Miranda belongs to all of us, not just you, Kendall, and you're the one taking a detour to la-la-land, not me. Look at you, you're a mess—you slept in your clothes, didn't you? Let's just hope you don't make the front page of the Pine Valley Bulletin looking like that tomorrow—and you took Miranda from Myrtle's, where she was perfectly comfortable, and brought her here without having a thing ready yet. Does any of that sound rational to you?"

Kendall looked down defensively at her rumpled clothes, which looked even more rumpled than they had before she'd left Myrtle's…but maybe that was because Greenlee had such a way of ruffling her feathers, feathers that had already been well ruffled by Zach. "I wasn't expecting to hit the headlines and I simply wanted to get Miranda away from Myrtle's before Zach showed up. Is that all right with you, Greenlee?"

Suddenly Greenlee's cell phone rang, and everybody jumped. Her saucer-like eyes even rounder than usual, she answered it in a whisper. "Ryan?"

Kendall, too, held her breath. Every atom in her body seemed to hold its breath, the whole world seemed to stop rotating on its axis, in the endless second or two it took for Greenlee to listen to what Ryan was saying, then mouth the word, "Nothing," and resume her conversation, turning her back in an indication the rest of it was private.

As the horrible tension that had so abruptly filled her body drained from it again, Kendall felt wiped out in both body and spirit. To make matters worse, the noise from the ringing phone made Miranda start crying again, or maybe the baby was just sensitive to the edgy atmosphere between herself and Greenlee, which they couldn't seem to control even on a good day, or maybe Miranda was just missing her mother as ferociously as Kendall was…maybe, or probably, all three. Whatever it was, though, was irrelevant, as Kendall couldn't seem to pacify Miranda.

Sitting beside her niece, Kendall tried to divert her with a combination of funny faces, clicking noises, and peek-a-boo games, but Miranda refused to be consoled. The very faint winds still remaining in Kendall's drooping sails completed their exodus, leaving her utterly deflated. "You and me both, Miranda," she mumbled wearily to the crying baby, "you and me both."

"Well, the two of you certainly both need a time out," Greenlee announced.

Sagging against the sofa cushions, Kendall was sure, given the vicissitudes of their relationship, there must have been another time—although she couldn't for the life of her recall when—she had so much wanted to throttle Mrs. Lavery. If the devil had come prancing through the wall at that moment, Kendall would not have hesitated to sell her soul right then and there for nothing more than the energy to do it. But since he was not so obliging and she lacked the energy on her own to even pick up and throw a sofa pillow at the criminally sprightly Greenlee, Kendall had to be satisfied with staring daggers at her.

"No, Greenlee, you're the one who needs a time out, lots of time out of here, before I lose what sanity I still have left. Go back to Fusion or go screw yourself, I don't care, just get out and leave me alone, now."

"Sorry, no can do, not yet anyway. I have to wait until Ryan comes over to pick me up. He doesn't want to take a chance on the press hounding me again. So pick up the phone and tell the guard at the main entrance to put Ryan on your visitor list so he can come through that way and we don't run into any of the reporters, if they're still out there."

Kendall groaned, but complied. Whatever it took to get rid of Greenlee. While she made the call, Greenlee look over entertaining Miranda, and the baby not only stopped crying, she was laughing at Greenlee's antics.

"See?" Greenlee looked up triumphantly. "I told you I know babies. Let me take her home with us, Kendall, at least until you get yourself sorted out. I mean, where were you planning to stash Miranda while you take a shower, for instance, or while you're asleep? She's mobile now. You'll have to watch her every second until you get baby-proofed."

"Like you are?"

Puffing out her chest like a little wren, Greenlee said proudly, "We've already furnished our nursery. Have to be prepared."

"Really. Do you have a pink nursery and a blue nursery, or is it just half pink and half blue, in case you end up having a hermaphrodite?"

"Funny, Kendall. Neither—it's yellow, green, and white. All top-of-the-line Bellini furniture and designer bedding. Just look at Miranda perking up! You'd like that, wouldn't you, baby? You'll be all safe and sound with me and Ryan until Auntie Kendall gets her act together, at which point you'll be eighteen. And tell Auntie Kendall that bad man Zach Slater—okay, I guess he's your Uncle Zach, but let's face it, your family tree has some shady branches—would be miles away, too. After all, poor Auntie Kendall can't even go potty all by herself right now without worrying that Mr. Slater might break in and grab you while she's, er, occupied."

Kendall groaned again. "I hate you, Greenlee." Just one more thing she'd neglected to consider when bringing Miranda here from Myrtle's to hide her in plain sight here in her condo, twenty feet away from Zach's: The necessity to watch her every single second. "Her car seat converts to a stroller. I'll just go out and get it from the car and strap her in that when I need to, and take her in the bathroom with me."

Greenlee kept trying to whittle away at her resolve. "Ohhh, hear that, Miranda? You'll love that, won't you? I know I would."

Had Ryan not arrived then, Greenlee might have been sporting some sores herself, Kendall's exhaustion notwithstanding. But if she and Greenlee were usually more evenly matched, she had never been any match for Ryan's will, which in this matter was perfectly aligned with his wife's, and put the final nail in the coffin of her resistance to Greenlee's plan…at least for now.

"Kendall, we know how much you love Miranda and this isn't about depriving you of seeing her. Greenlee's plan to keep her at our place just makes more sense. Take a look around your place—it's a regular baby hazard zone," Ryan pronounced in his patronizing way.

"Yeah, well, I think you're both exaggerating as usual. But…maybe you do have a point," Kendall said unenthusiastically.

"And promise Kendall we won't invite Zach Slater over for tea, Ryan," Greenlee piped up, at the strategic moment.

"Kendall, I'll give you my word on that. Zach Slater won't be allowed to come within a mile of our apartment," he nodded. "Everyone in the security office already has his picture, with a big red circle and slash over it to make sure they get the message, just on principle."

Kendall caved. The Laverys left her condo, proudly bearing a perfectly willing Miranda with them, as a very dejected and downcast Kendall watched from the window and waved good-bye to her innocently traitorous niece.

Unsure what to do next, Kendall aimed the remote at her television and scrolled through the channels until she found CNN. The time was not quite noon, not even twelve hours since her family had gone missing, but the emptiness waiting to move in on her once she was alone again seemed to have lasted forever. But she had to fill in the time…had to be prepared, had to keep up appearances, had to keep eating and sleeping, getting up in the morning and showering and…showering. She glanced at the television; a commercial break was on.

I'll watch the noon news, she decided slowly. Then I'll get ready to go to Greenlee and Ryan's and see for myself how Miranda is doing over there. Then I'll stop by Fusion. But first I'll fix something to eat while I'm watching the news.