“There’s a technique called hoovering,” John said, “that’s used by narcissistic con artists to suck their victims back into relationships with them. Basically, they pretend they’ve changed and they can’t live without you. It’s named after the Hoover vacuum cleaner, both because the hoovering person not only desires to suck you back into the relationship, and because he or she will always ultimately treat you like dirt. I worked for a guy like that once. He kept trying to manipulate me into doing things that could land us both in jail.”

“Wow,” Polly said. “I’ll never look at my vacuum cleaner the same way again. I wish I knew about this hoovering thing earlier—it might have saved me a few bad years.”

I looked at John. “You never told me that story.”

He shrugged. I shrugged. I’d completely forgotten why we were mad at each other.

“So,” I said to Polly. “How did it go with the three faux fathers?” My preschool teacher’s brain immediately kicked in. Despite myself, I started singing in my head to the tune of “Three Blind Mice.” Three faux fathers, three faux fathers, see how they run, see how they run. They all rolled over the kitchen floor—”

“So sweet,” Polly said. Tears came out of nowhere and cascaded down Polly’s cheeks. She wiped them away, but not before one plopped on top of her casserole.

I handed her a paper napkin.

“Sorry,” she said. “Hormones. I thanked them all for their kind attention, which I wish I could bottle and share with all the other pregnant women in the world. And then I told them to back off.”

“How’d they take it?” I took another bite of casserole. For something almost completely unidentifiable, it was oddly addicting.

Polly smiled. “Your dad seems particularly concerned about the baby having a father’s name on the birth certificate. I told him I already have one: Toby Continued.”

“Ha,” I said. “You’re going to absolutely rock this baby. Pun intended.”

Chapter Thirty-One

“Hi,” I said as I walked into the cat room in my sleep T-shirt.

“Hi,” John said. He was standing in the only available floor space holding a little red and blue plastic clicker. I looked back and forth between the mattress on the floor and the old plaid couch, decided to take a seat on the couch.

“Sit,” John said. Horatio sat. John clicked the clicker and gave Horatio a dehydrated chicken treat.

“Ohmigod,” I said, “Will you look at that?”

Pebbles and all four kittens were sitting on the floor over by the bookcase, waiting for treats.

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” John said. He gave the cats each a treat anyway.

“Sit,” John said again. Horatio sat. The cats sat, too. John clicked the clicker and passed out treats all around.