Chapter 10: Jo-Jo

Valerio picked up on the first ring.

"I'm getting a car," he said. "I'll be there in three hours."

"Don't."

"Josephine."

"If you tear down I-95 at two in the morning, it looks like we panicked. We didn't panic. You're on a business trip. I'm home with our son."

The line was quiet.

I heard what I'd said a second after he did.

"Our son," he said.

"For the purposes of the visit."

"Of course."

"Come home after the visit," I said. "Not before. I've got this."

Paola and I cleaned until one in the morning anyway.

We hid the good knives. We put the wine on the high shelf.

We scrubbed the crayon off the long table, then drew a little back on, so a child lived here.

At ten past ten the next morning the gate buzzer rang.

The evaluator was a tall woman in a raincoat with a clipboard and very flat shoes.

She looked at the iron gate, the stone walls and the bodyguard, and wrote something down.

"Mrs. Ruggeri?"

"Josephine Whitsett. Tito's stepmother. Please come in."

She walked through the house slowly and touched nothing.

She opened the refrigerator. She looked at the list of nannies still taped to it and read every word.

She wrote for a long time.

"He was a lot," I said. "Before. Six nannies in a year after losing his mother."

"And now?"

"Now he bites less."

Her pen paused. I thought I saw her mouth move.

Upstairs, she asked to see the bathroom Tito used.

I opened the door.

There was a frog in the bathtub.

A real one. Fat, green, sitting in two inches of water on a sponge.

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