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“Hey, sneak thief.”
The person rummaging through the bottom cabinet next to the sink pauses, and Jim finds himself facing down a pair of seemingly guileless hazel eyes.
“What are you supposed to be doing right now?”
The three-year-old smiles sheepishly and stares down at her stockinged feet, thumb immediately entering mouth. “Napping,” she mumbles around the finger.
“And why aren’t you napping?” he asks, putting his hands on his hips.
Charlotte smiles around her thumb. “Not tired, Uncle Jim.”
“So you’re going through my secret stash instead?” The secret stash of cookies and pop tarts that he now seriously doubts the wisdom of sharing with a toddler who inherited her mother’s sweet tooth. And her mother’s doe eyes, which Jim has begun to realize is the root of the problem.
“Wanted a snack,” she answers a sing-song voice, turning up the charm to ten. “Mummy’s with graphics and Daddy’s in a ‘filiates meeting.”
(Her mother’s doe eyes, and her father’s affability. The kid, as many in the newsroom have said, is going places. Most likely to Chelsea Day School on West 14th, at the moment, but places nevertheless.
…the past few months have been a struggle to keep Will from filling the D block with a harsh critique of the private preschool system in New York City, regardless of how many tests and interviews little Charlie aces.
Another week, and Jim’s fairly certain Mac’s going to give in and let him do it for her own sanity.)
Crouching down, he lifts an eyebrow at her. “So you raided my stash?”
“Best one,” she mumbles around her thumb again, clutching her blanket and swinging her free arm along the hem of her polka-dotted dress.
(How Mac manages to keep the child so well-dressed, Jim doesn’t know. He assumes it’s related to her mild shoe fetish.)
“Hey,” he teases, tugging at her wrist. “Can’t hear you. Thumb out.”
“You have the best one,” Charlotte says, louder, scrunching up her face indignantly.
Jim snorts. “Well then, I guess I can let you have one cookie. You know the rules though. No telling Mum.”
“No telling Mum,” she repeats solemnly, before diving back into the cupboard and coming back with two chocolate chip cookies. Jim stares her down (“I can count, little girl”) until she puts the second one back.
It’s only then that he notices her hair, which he swears was—okay, probably—in a ponytail with a bow or something (one of those things that Charlie likes Mac to put in her hair every day and that Maggie has a drawer full by now by virtue of collecting them when they inevitably fall out) before the failed attempt at a nap, is now a dark blonde mess.
“Charlie, what happened to your hair?” he asks, standing and lifting her onto his hip.
She’s a little pre-occupied with the cookie, but manages to answer through a mouthful of crumbs. “Hurted. Took it out after Mummy put me on the futon.”
Jim sighs for effect. “I guess I’ll have to take you to Aunt Maggie to fix it.”
(It’s entirely possible that this is exactly what Charlotte wants, but it’s his job to indulge and spoil her—according to Mac, anyway—so why the hell not.)
He waits until she finishes swallowing before cutting off her smirk (Will’s) by upending her and holding her upside down a half a foot or so away from his torso.
“Uncle Jim!” she squeals, kicking her short legs in the air, which only makes the problem worse when the skirt of her dress falls down to cover her face. “Put me down!”
“Nope.”
“Aunt Maggie!” Charlotte cries.
“Can’t help you,” Jim says, snorting, before coming up behind his girlfriend sitting and working at her desk, holding Charlotte upside down over Maggie’s head so that they’re at eye level with each other, albeit oriented in opposite directions.
“Aunt Maggie,” she whimpers plaintively. “Uncle Jim’s being mean.”
Maggie nods sympathetically. “He does that.”
“Hey, she stole a cookie,” he protests, while Maggie leans forward to steal kisses off of both of Charlie’s cheeks.
Maggie whirls around him. “You gave her a cookie?”
“I said she stole—”
“You gave the child sugar?”
When Charlie begins to kick again, he drops her unceremoniously into Maggie’s lap. (Well, not drop. He wouldn’t drop a three-year-old. Rather he unceremoniously rights her and lets her land in Maggie’s lap in a very controlled movement.
She giggles, so it’s fine.)
“Just a cookie,” he and Charlotte protest at the same time.
“One,” Charlotte says, holding up a chubby finger an inch or so in front of Maggie’s eyes.
(Mac and Will have her counting into the thirties, now. It’s very impressive. Although, considering that the child’s first words were “thirty back,” in the middle of a broadcast nevertheless, it’s not entirely surprising.
Will likes to joke that in a few more years Charlie’s subtraction abilities will surpass her mother’s.)
She sighs, pre-emptorily combing her fingers through the toddler’s knotted hair, reaching for the brush in her purse. “Okay, but I want you to eat something healthy, too. A granola bar?”
“If you do milkmaid braids,” Charlie offers, trying to turn herself around in Maggie’s lap.
“Milkmaid braids?” she asks, fishing out a granola bar and handing it to Jim to unwrap.
Charlie nods seriously. “With ribbons.”
“Ribbons?”
They stare each other down for a moment, ending with Maggie tickling Charlie’s sides until she shrieks with laughter, bending at the waist.
“Alright, I can do ribbons.”