Page 120 of Keep Him Like Secrets

“Oh, hey! Hey, baby,” she cooed at the black and white pigeon with a tiny splash of green on his neck. “Oh, I know you! You’re Dominic.”

Yes, he was.

“You were found on your side in an underpass in Chicago. You little survivor, you.”

“You can touch him. He’s friendly.”

“Can I?” she asked the pigeon as she offered her hands.

He tilted his head then stepped right into them.

“You’re home now, baby,” she told him as she carefully lifted him. “We’re going to give you such a special life. No more streets for you.”

Her eyes filled again.

“Thank you,” she said, sniffling hard as the pigeon hopped out of her hand to fly over to her shoulder. “We have so many things to buy.”

“He has an enclosure. Ledges. Food and water dishes. Soft beds. Seed. Red grit. Oh, and a few of those diaper things, so he doesn’t mess up the whole apartment.”

“You… planned.”

“I researched and planned for months.”

“This is the best gift I’ve ever gotten.”

I moved over to sit beside her as Dominic toyed with her hair.

“Does it make up for that baking… mishap?”

“Mishap? That was deliberate poisoning.”

“It was the tiniest pinch of nutmeg known to mankind.”

“I still tasted it.”

Yes, she had. Then demanded I remake the apple turnovers without it.

“I will never try to expand your taste buds again.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” she said, leaning into me.

Saff - 3 years

“There’s something wrong with this coffee,” I said, waddling out of my office to put my strawberry mug—one of ten I now kept stocked at my coffee station—down on my assistant’s desk.

Her name was Gina, and she was an old girlfriend of Teresa’s who’d taken twenty years off of work to raise six children. To say she was capable of handling any catastrophe—whether real or made-up thanks to my own overreacting—was an understatement.

“The coffee is just fine,” she said with a wave of her dainty wrist, sending no fewer than four gold bracelets jangling.

“It tastes funny.”

“Maybe your taste buds are funky.”

I could always tell Gina was bullshitting me when she started shuffling things around on her desk. Just like she was right then.

“What’d you do to my coffee?”

“Made you a fresh cup like the intuitive, capable, and kind assistant I am,” she said, that accent of hers getting thicker as she spoke. “Heaven forbid I do my job.”

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