Page 151 of Clinically Bewitched
I nodded slowly. “Right.”
“Good,” Nathan said. “Then let’s start with the basics. What’s the first thing you need to do?”
Despite everything, despite the terror and the chaos and the absolute certainty that my life was about to become completely unmanageable, I felt something settle in my chest.
I had help.
I had backup.
I had a plan.
Well, the beginning of a plan.
The universe wanted war?
Fine.
Bring it on!
Chapter Twenty-Five
Julien
The spreadsheets worked.
I needed to document this moment. To record it for posterity, for future generations, for anyone who ever doubted that chaos could be conquered through proper organization and meticulous planning.
The spreadsheetsworked.
Athena’s pregnancy had proceeded according to schedule. Well,myschedule. The feeding times, the prenatal appointments, the vitamin regimen, the exercise routine, the hydration tracking—all of it had been executed with surgical precision.
“You’re very smug,” Athena said from the couch, where she was currently thirty-seven weeks pregnant with triplets and approximately the size of a small planet. Possibly Jupiter.
“I’m not smug.”
“You’re absolutely smug. You’ve been smug for weeks. You’re practically radiating smugness. If smugness were visible, you’d be glowing.”
“I’m satisfied,” I corrected, reviewing my latest checklist. “There’s a difference.”
“You literally have a spreadsheet tracking your spreadsheet success rate.”
“That’s just good data management.”
“It’s smug. You have agraph. With color-coded bars showing the correlation between spreadsheet adherence and pregnancy milestones.”
“Visual representation aids in pattern recognition.”
I looked up from my tablet. She was smiling at me. That smile that meant she was teasing but also genuinely amused by my neuroses. Also, she was eating pickles dipped in peanut butter, which the pregnancy cravings spreadsheet had predicted would happen.
The spreadsheets never lie.
“The pregnancy has gone smoothly,” I said.
“Because of your spreadsheets?”
“Partially.”
“Not because of, say, my body doing what bodies naturally do?”
