Page 48 of Worst Nanny Ever (Babes of Brewing #2)

Hot damn, this is a day of turbulent emotions. I’ll have to ask Dottie if Mercury is in retrograde or something.

“You’re friendly with Eugene?” she asks, glancing up, the note fluttering in her hand.

“I am. He replaced me at Big Catch Brewing. I started hanging out with him to help with his transition, but we’ve become friends.”

I’m surprised by the truth of that.

“He had nothing but good things to say about you,” I say, wanting to make his case. “We’re sorry we screwed up his present, but I have to tell you, I was with him when he painted it, and I’ve never seen anyone take so much care with a gift.”

She sniffles a little, then nods. “Yes. Tell him I’ll be there.”

I reach out to take the bag with the hedgehog pieces, but she tightens her grip. “I’ll keep it. My daughter is good at fixing things. I’ll see if there’s something she can do.”

“You have a daughter?” Ollie asks in disbelief.

To my utter shock, Mrs. Applebaum laughs. “Yes, but she’s not a young child anymore. She’s thirty. ”

“I didn’t know you were that old,” he says with the complete innocence of youth. Then he tugs the bottom of my shirt with all the subtlety of Travis when he wants to lodge a complaint. “Well, can we go, Hannah? I want to watch the Turtles .”

“My condolences,” Mrs. Applebaum says to me, letting her mask drop again. “But I admire your devotion.”

It’s as if I became a real person the moment I brought Eugene’s gift to her. It hits me that she’s probably dealt with hundreds if not thousands of parents and guardians making demands of her over the course of her career. She’d probably have to be good with boundaries to survive as a teacher.

I nod in acknowledgement. “I’ll tell Eugene you’ll be there.” I start to steer Ollie toward the door, but then stop and turn back. “By the way…you’re going to see a few changes in him.”

Better to warn her now, in case she was super attached to his awful mustache.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, his mustache is gone, and I helped him with some wardrobe updates.”

She smiles. “You remind me of my daughter. She’s always trying to help me the way she sees best. If she had her say, I’d be on every dating site on the internet.

Of course, she’s had a hard time with dating too,” Mrs. Applebaum says, suddenly chatty.

“But that’s to be expected. I don’t mind telling you, because Eugene knows, of course, but my ex-husband was a philanderer. ”

“You deserve better,” I tell her.

“Perhaps I do.” She smiles at me and actually ruffles Ollie’s hair before we leave the classroom.

“That was weird,” Ollie says in the hall as we make our way toward the building’s main entrance.

“Adults are weird,” I agree.

We head back to Travis’s place, make some popcorn, and fall right into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for a few episodes before we head over to Sophie’s place to help her test the craft for her next pop-up event.

Making cereal box houses.

Apparently, we were her inspiration.

We’re back at Travis’s place eating pizza when my phone buzzes in my pocket.

“My phone,” I say through a mouthful of pizza, pulling it out of my pocket.

“You’re definitely getting addicted to that thing,” he says in a sad voice, like he’ll miss me when I’m in phone rehab. “Shouldn’t we have a no-electronic-devices-at-dinner rule?”

“Probably,” I agree, swallowing. Then I look at the screen and gasp, because it’s a message from Eugene.

Mercury has to be in retrograde.

I’m with my son, and we’ve found something interesting.

To be clear: this is my evening off. I’m not shirking my duty at Big Catch.

I’d NEVER accuse you of that.

Will you come over to Cormac’s house so we can show you?

YES. Send me the address, and we’ll be right there.

I’m with Ollie. I’m guessing it’s okay if he comes?

There’s a pause, three dots appear, disappear, reappear, and finally a message comes through.

Yes, if you must.

Love that ornery streak of yours. But I’ve got some news for you too…

Please. I don’t like suspense. Did you give Moira the hedgehog?

Yes, and to make a long, super interesting story short, she’s coming on Friday. We’ll see you soon.

Bless you

Cormac’s house is a little old bungalow in West Asheville with a surprisingly large fenced-in yard.

“Do you think he has any toys?” Ollie asks.

“Probably not the kind he wants kids playing with. But I’ll let you use my phone.”

We unlatch the fence and approach the front door, and before I even knock, a dog starts in with a deep, resonant bark.

“It’s okay,” a voice says from the other side. “She likes kids.”

She doesn’t sound like she enjoys much of anyone.

I smile tightly at Ollie. “Get behind me, Ollie. Just in case.”

He listens, his little fists gripping the back of my shirt, and the door swings open to reveal a small but muscular corgi, who stops barking and bounds across the threshold to sniff my feet.

I put out my hand, but the dog ignores it, her body going rigid, and then bursts off after a squirrel, barking again.

A tall guy with curly brown hair, gray eyes, and glasses stands in the doorway next to Eugene. “Sorry,” he says. “Cookie’s failed obedience school twice. My neighbors love me. Let me just set up the ball thrower to keep her busy.”

He squeezes past us and pulls something out from behind the porch. It’s some kind of metal box, one side filled with at least two dozen green tennis balls, and to my shock, when he flips a switch, the device starts moving around on hinged legs. A few seconds later, it spits a tennis ball.

“Did you make that?”

“Yeah,” he says dismissively, as if it’s no big deal. “That’s my hobby. I make things.”

Everyone makes things. I like to make messes. Not very many people make ball-throwing robots. But I let it go. Right now, I’m more interested in what he found.

“That is so cool,” Ollie says, watching the robot with fascination.

Eugene makes a hmph sound under his breath as he steps aside and waves us in. We enter the house, followed by Cormac, who shuts the door.

“You haven’t introduced yourself, Cormac,” Eugene says gruffly, as if he still thinks he needs to teach his son manners.

An image pops into my head of Travis doing that when Ollie’s thirty, and I smile.

Will I be there laughing at him?

I’m surprised by the tug of longing in my chest.

I want to be there. I don’t know what the future will look like, or how we’ll get there—Travis and I have been living firmly in the present for the last few days—but I’d like us to have one.

“Uh, yeah, I’m Cormac,” the curly-haired guy says, smiling at us. “You must be Hannah and Ollie.”

“Yeah,” Ollie says. “Can I check out your other creations?”

Eugene surprises me by saying, “How about I show you, young man? And Cormac can talk to Hannah for a minute.”

I’m grateful he doesn’t want to keep me in suspense. I don’t want to keep him in suspense either, so I say, “Our mutual friend is excited to see you again.”

“Wonderful,” he says with a broad smile .

The house is tidy, with a big sectional couch by the door and a TV across from it.

Cormac leads me past it, down a short hallway, past a room with a bright red guitar displayed on the wall, and into an office with two computer screens and a swiveling desk chair.

He sits on the singular chair, seeming unaware that I’m awkwardly standing behind it.

“All of this suspense is killing me,” I admit.

“Well,” Cormac says, swiveling to look at me. “First…” He glances at the door. “Would you mind shutting that?”

I do, and he continues in a hushed voice. “I wanted to thank you for helping my dad. He’s been fighting off a pretty bad depression, but everything seems to have changed now that he’s hanging out with you and your friends. I owe you one, Hannah.”

People are offering me favors left and right lately. I smile at him. “Seems to me we’re already square if you figured out who was posting those messages.”

He nods. “But I’ll still owe you one. Because your favor only took me half an hour.”

That makes me feel pretty inadequate, since I spent way more than half an hour trying to research the problem, but he clearly knows what he’s doing. “Thank you.”

He nods again, then moves on, saying, “There were half a dozen identical posts across different discussion boards, all posted by the same username over a span of three days in mid-October. October twelve to fifteenth. They were all deleted on Saturday evening, but they had already been cached.

I gasp, because I’d only known about two posts. The one found by Alice and the one that had attracted the more aggressive Ships fans. The timeline also suggests means it wasn’t Rachel.

“I’m pretty sure I know who did this,” Cormac continues, pushing his glasses up .

“How?” I ask eagerly. “Was it the photos? Did you strip the metadata? Oooh, or figure out the IP address?”

He smiles. “That wouldn’t have told me much. You can only get within ten to fifty miles of the physical location if you have the IP address.”

Well, that’s disappointing…and possibly reassuring.

“Then how?”

He pauses. “This person created a fake Gmail account to connect to the fan sites, but Gmail requires you to provide a first and last name and a birthday. I was able to figure out the information used to create the account. Either someone set this person up, which feels like a stretch, or he did it himself and was incredibly sloppy.”

That means a man was behind this. My first thought is that it must have been Jonah after all, trying to get even with Rob by destroying his band.

But that still doesn’t totally feel right.

“All right,” I say tightly. “Enough foreplay. Who did this? Was it Jonah?”

He purses his lips and shakes his head. “I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

“Too late.”

“You’re right. But I’m a little familiar with your friend’s band, so I know this is a big deal. That’s why I wanted to tell you in person. I wanted to explain that it could still be someone else using this person’s name.”

My mind darts to Rob, finds it impossible, and then settles on…

“The name on the account is Chance Bixby. I can show you, if you’d like.”

I don’t want to see the evidence of his betrayal, but I’m the kind of person who believes in bringing receipts, and Travis needs to know this immediately. Like, yesterday.