Once Upon Stilettos

“We have some news for you,” she said. She didn’t sound grief-stricken, so I allowed myself to relax slightly.



I kicked off my shoes and sat down on the couch. There was no such thing as a short conversation with my mother, so I needed to get comfortable. “What kind of news?” I asked warily. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she told me she’d found an exciting new job for me or the perfect man for me to marry in a nearby town so I could come home from New York right away. My parents weren’t thrilled about me being in New York, to put it mildly.



“Good news. We’re so excited. Your brother Frank Junior won the Rotary Club raffle at the homecoming game.”



“That’s nice,” I said. It certainly wasn’t call-everyone-right-away news. They usually raffled off something like a shotgun or a duck blind.



“It was two round-trip airline tickets to anywhere in the country, and he gave them to your father and me so we could come visit you. Isn’t that exciting?”



“Wow,” was all I could say—literally. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see my parents. I hadn’t seen them in a little more than a year, and I still suffered the occasional pang of homesickness. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to see them in New York in the middle of everything that was going on.



My parents in New York was a frightening enough idea. They’d never left Texas in their entire lives, as far as I knew. They found Dallas huge and intimidating. I couldn’t imagine turning them loose in Manhattan. I wouldn’t be able to hand them a subway map and tell them to have fun. I wondered if I could get away with booking them on one of those all-day bus tours that went all over the city—would that look like I was ditching them, or like I was being a dutiful daughter and giving them star treatment? Throw a magical threat into the mix, and things got a little too complicated for me to imagine coping with any degree of sanity.



“She’s speechless,” my mom said aside to my dad, who usually stood nearby while she talked to me. I didn’t know why they didn’t get a speakerphone. To me, she said, “Now, don’t worry about having to put us up for the week. I know you said your apartment was small. We’ll get a hotel.”



I knew manners meant I should protest and insist that they stay with us, but with Marcia’s sofa bed in the living room pulled out, nearly every square inch of our apartment was full. We might be able to put someone in the bathtub, but that could get awkward unless that person was an early riser. “I’ll make reservations for you at a place near here that’s not too expensive, but still clean and safe,” I said. “When will you be here?”



“She’ll find us a hotel,” she said to my father before saying to me, “We were planning to be there for Thanksgiving. We can fly up that Monday, then back the next Monday. You don’t think it’ll be too hard to get a hotel then, do you? I mean, with all the people there for the parade?”



“I don’t know, but I’ll give it a try.” My mind was still buzzing from the idea of my parents coming anywhere near my crazy world. Normal New York would be wild to them. Magical New York would be mind blowing. Not that they’d necessarily see it, but I didn’t want to take that chance.



“You probably have to line up really early to see that parade, don’t you?”



“I think so. You’ll see it better on TV.”



“Then it’ll be just like home. We can make Thanksgiving dinner at your place for you and Marcia and Gemma. Won’t that be fun?”



It did sound fun, in a way. It also sounded like something that could drive me stark raving crazy. I had exactly one week to prepare. Maybe if I got moving on that investigation, I could nail our spy, save MSI once again, and earn myself a day off while my parents were in town. I imagined myself having a burst of insight the next morning, calling a staff meeting, then outlining the evidence that led to the dramatic revelation of the culprit, just like Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, I seemed to be more Inspector Clouseau than Sherlock Holmes. At best, I was Jessica Fletcher with a slightly better wardrobe and a lower body count among my friends and neighbors.



“I’ll make reservations for you tomorrow,” I said. “Then let me know your flight details so I can meet you at the airport.”



“Oh, you don’t have to go to any bother.”



“It’s no bother, really,” I said. It would be a lot easier to meet them at the airport than to identify them at the morgue or put up MISSING posters about them after they accepted a ride from an unlicensed cabdriver who seemed friendly. I wasn’t sure either of my parents had ever been to an airport before, so they wouldn’t know the drill.