12. Expedition
Bonnie spent a very enjoyable evening, as it happened. With her brothers' permission, she poked into the deep recesses of their closets, and explored both basement and attic storage areas until she found the boxes and bins that contained the remnants of their boyhood dinosaur mania. The containers disgorged a wide variety of materials, although, as she had anticipated, toy dinosaurs predominated. These ranged from cheap plastic figures and homey stuffed animals to large, finely-detailed models and expensive robotisaurs. Junior and Max had been on their way out to meet friends, but, one gander at their old animatronic "pets" had them dropping down on the toy-strewn floor to put the carnivorous D-Rex and the herbivorous Cetio through their computerized paces. After that, there was no getting rid of them; they insisted on "helping" Bonnie sort through the collection, creating ever greater chaos out of the original order, but doing so with so much pleasure and brio in reacquainting themselves with their old possessions that Bonnie couldn't begrudge them the added work they made for her. They proved generous, too, in the end, agreeing to part with many of their things, including a well-thumbed hardcover copy of Syd Hoff's classic Danny and the Dinosaur.
"I loved this book," Junior sighed, flipping one last time through its pages.
"It's the first book I read by myself cover-to-cover," Max reminisced. "There are a couple of sequels, too, I remember: one, about a birthday party, and another where the dinosaur goes to Danny's summer camp. I don't think we owned those, though."
"I'll see if I can download them to my vid-screen," Bonnie said. "Thanks for the heads-up."
By the time she'd filled her canvas messenger bag with an assortment of toys, stickers, art supplies and snacks, and returned the repackaged boxes and bins to storage, there was only a half hour or so to her grandfather's usual bedtime, so she raced to his suite for a last minute catch-up and to wish him a good night. She found him sitting up in his recliner, leafing through the pages of an expensively-bound maroon-leather book, the contents of which were well-known to both of them. He shut the book at the sight of her, and smiled in welcome. "Sorry to be so late, Gramps!" She bent down and pressed a kiss on his raddled cheek. "I'm going on an expedition tomorrow, and I had to gather my supplies."
"An expedition, eh?" His voice sounded somewhat rusty, as if from disuse. "Tell me about it."
Knowing, as she did, her grandfather's particular sensitivity to instances of maternal negligence, she'd had it in mind to gloss over the details of how she'd come to volunteer for a day of child-care, but her long commute home had afforded her the time to reflect on Valeria Dunbar's behavior, and the more she examined it, the more troubling she found it. Dr. Baer had not come into the workroom looking for Danny which could only mean that, even a full forty-five minutes after she'd left, Val had not informed her ex of what she'd done. What if, in his ignorance, Dr. Baer had simply gone home after the conclusion of his teleconference? What would Bonnie have done when, as must eventually have happened, she'd sought him out in his office, and found no one there? She had no contact numbers for him, and, unless that critical information was secreted somewhere in Danny's backpack, she would have been obliged to call museum security for help. As time passed, and his father failed to appear, Danny would certainly have grown frightened, especially if Bonnie had been unable to mask her own feelings of anxiety and confusion. What a nightmare it might have been!
These thoughts disturbed her to such an extent that Bonnie decided to lay the whole truth before her grandfather after all. "You were a law-enforcement officer," she said, upon recounting the incident. "Would you say that constitutes child endangerment?"
Her grandfather considered the evidence. "This woman doesn't know you from Adam, you say?"
Bonnie shook her head. "In fact, she had to read my name off my ID badge. All she knows about me is that I work in the painting conservation department of the Jeffersonian. She had absolutely no reason to entrust her child to me."
"Except for your honest face, Caramella. No one who looks as sweet as you could possibly have evil intentions. Still," he went on, his tone hardening. "Her actions are unconscionable. Makes you wonder if she pulls this kind of stunt regularly."
This had not yet occurred to Bonnie, but… "Dr. Baer did say he'd sue for full custody if she ever gave him an opening. You don't separate a child from his mother if you think he's receiving adequate care, do you?"
"This Dr. Baer fellow… He's the unsuitable man you told me about last week." It wasn't framed as a question, but Grandpa B smiled smugly just the same to see her slack-jawed reaction. "Just because I'm old, doesn't mean I'm soft in the head. Acrimonious divorce, five-year-old child, custody battles… I'm still plenty sharp enough to add all that up."
"No fair, Gramps! Nonagenarians are supposed to have a lousy memory for recent events. I'm going to have to watch myself around you."
"Bah! It's that Baer woman needs watching, if you ask me."
"Her name's not Baer, it's…" Bonnie caught her grandfather's subtle lean forward, and stopped herself just in time. "Gramps, you sly boots! I see what you're up to, and, trust me, you are not getting involved in this. Don't make me sorry I took you into my confidence!"
"Get involved," he scoffed, waving her suspicions off irritably. "And, how would I do that, exactly? You may have noticed I'm hardly in shape to tail the woman myself, and everyone I've ever known at the Bureau or the D. C. police force is either dead or retired."
Bonnie continued to regard him sternly. "That 'poor, pitiful me' routine is not going to work with me, Gramps. You're a sneaky old coot, and don't think for a minute I'm not on to you! Now, if you really want to be helpful, you can give me your best advice on how to deal with five-year-old boys. After raising two sons and six grandsons, you've got to have loads of great tips."
Grandpa B eyed her unfavorably, but, after a moment, let go of his displeasure enough to grumble, "Just don't patronize the kid. Don't do his thinking for him, and, within reasonable limits, follow his lead. Go with your gut, Chuckles. And, when all else fails…"
He had Bonnie on the edge of her ottoman. "What?"
"Ice cream. And, lots of it."
Her grandfather had never steered her wrong, and his counsel, when put into practice the next day, served her very well. As might have been expected, the roughest patch occurred right at the outset, but it was Dr. Baer, with his endless reminders, recommendations, requests and requirements who proved difficult, not Danny. Her little side-kick, looking less of a kindergartener than ever in better-fitting, gently-worn clothes, accepted the hand she held out to him without hesitation and turned back only once to wave a cheerful farewell.
They began their expedition, as planned, in the dinosaur hall, where the age-browned skeletons of an attacking T-Rex and his triceratops prey commanded center stage. On either side of their raised island, smaller, but still massive, dinosaurs stood in their characteristic poses or were partially embedded into the matrix of floor or wall. For all his excitement, Danny did not flit from one display to another, but poured over each exhibit, identifying each creature in turn, and relating some fact or tidbit about their size, features or habits he found particularly interesting. His managing with ease such complicated names as "archaeopteryx" and "pachycephalosaur" in his little child's voice charmed smiles from other visitors, many of whom lingered a few extra moments to listen to him talk. One mother, before shepherding her brood away, murmured in a congratulatory tone, "That's quite the little brainiac you've got there!" As the first hour passed into the second, Bonnie, as promised, took a picture of Danny studying the stegosaurus, and texted it to Dr. Baer.
They spent another sixty minutes in the exhibit's discovery room (photo of Danny preparing his scallop shell fossil), and, after that, sat in on a presentation regarding which dinosaurs would have called the D. C. area home during prehistoric times (photo of an eager Danny, hand in the air). Lunch at the museum café provided the day's second challenge, as crowding made securing seats difficult, and once that was accomplished, Danny would only take a few small bites of the peanut-butter and jelly sandwich his father had prepared for him. "I can't," he said, when Bonnie urged him to eat just a bit more. "I'm full."
"But you need food for energy," she protested. "We have a busy afternoon ahead." Not even the promise of ice cream induced him to change his mind (photo of Danny playing with the plastic apatosaurus she had rescued from storage while she finished her veggie burger).
At Danny's request, they abandoned the dinosaurs, and passed the next two hours companionably wandering the mammal and sea life exhibit halls (pictures of Danny mimicking the stance of a taxidermied orangutan, and staring up at the underbelly of a model blue whale suspended from the ceiling). Bonnie knew Danny was flagging when he made no objection to their returning to the café so she could have her afternoon tea. He obliged her by nibbling at his sandwich while they sat in the now largely deserted dining area, a partially-completed sticker book open between them (picture of Danny affixing dinosaur eggs in a hadrosaur's nest). When Dr. Baer came up to their table a short while later, he found them bent together over Danny and the Dinosaur, laughing over the pair's antics and admiring the funny illustrations.
"Oh, hello!" Bonnie said, as Dr. Baer, with a "Hey, there, buddy," squatted down on Danny's other side. "Is it that time already?"
"It's past five," he managed through the stranglehold of Danny's hug around his neck. "Place is closing in twenty minutes."
"Daddy, Miss Bonnie brought me a book about a boy with my name!"
"A book" Bonnie added, with a lift of her brows, "that Danny read out loud to me."
Danny confirmed this with a nod. "Miss Bonnie said I'm a pwoddity. That's a good thing, right, Daddy?"
At Dr. Baer's helpless glance, Bonnie whispered, "Prodigy." And, then, more loudly, "It's a very good thing, Danny, and you're a very good companion. Thanks so much for coming with me today. I hope you had a good time."
"The bestest," he assured her.
"So, there's a second unsuitable man in my life," she sighed later that evening, as she and her grandfather shared a late supper of minestrone and french fries. "What is it with me and men, Gramps? Fate is so unkind."