Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 88290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“What? Buy a condo in a secure building that he can for sure resell once they move out or simply lease to them and let them make payments to him when they get out of college? That’s crazy. What a ridiculous idea. That’s pure madness.”
I just shook my head at her. “I’m not missing the sarcasm.”
She grunted.
“Not everything can be solved with money,” I informed her.
“That’s true,” she agreed. “But it certainly helps. And in this case, we’re not asking for a handout, they will pay rent.”
This was true.
“But I will not stick my nose in this specific situation until I’m asked.”
“That’s good.”
“Not that it will take that much longer,” she said with a shiver. “I mean seriously, just the stairwells in some of these buildings are scary as hell.”
I didn’t doubt it.
Dane and Aja came to dinner the Sunday before the Fourth of July and said that we were invited to their penthouse to watch fireworks on that Tuesday. Both Chilly and Dobby were welcome as well.
Sam appreciated it, but he liked to be home on the Fourth to make sure nothing got shot off around our house. This year the local fireworks display was canceled, though the parade was scheduled to go on as usual. The kids were game and said they would be there.
“You have to wait to drive home later or come home before they finish,” Sam warned them. He worried about them being on the road during any celebrations where the things used in the revels were flammable. Plus all the traffic where tempers were prone to flare and many people had been drinking. I couldn’t very well blame him.
“We’ll be careful,” Kola promised.
I was serving the lasagna when Dane cleared his throat.
“Oh God,” Aja groaned, leaning her forehead into her hand.
Our kids, which always included Jake and Harper and Dane and Aja’s kids, Robert and Gentry, plus Robert’s one-time friend, recently upgraded to actual girlfriend, Portia, were all in the living room watching some really horrible shark movie with Josh Lucas.
I stopped serving and looked at my brother. “What?”
He was scowling at me.
“I don’t even know what I did.”
“As an architect, do you or do you not think that I would know where a suitable apartment would be in the city for your son and his two friends?”
“Shit,” Sam muttered, “I’m sorry, Dane, I never even thought to ask.”
“Which is understandable,” he told my husband before turning to me. “But you, brother, used to work for me. You know as well as I do that one of the things we had to do was to help find people places to live, sometimes for over a year, while we renovated, or built from the ground up, their dream homes.”
“Shit,” I echoed Sam’s word. “I screwed up. Forgive me.”
He grunted.
“I think I wasn’t as worried about the timing because he just got home, you know? I like having him around.”
“But he needs to be settled before school starts,” Dane told me. “He needs to get into a routine to be ready. Yes?”
Whenever Dane asked a question that he knew you knew the answer to, he clipped the words. For people who didn’t know him, it sounded harsh. For me, I knew better. He was just trying to help me engage my logical mind.
“Yes,” I agreed.
He pulled his phone from the back pocket of his walking shorts, and my phone pinged. “There are four small townhouses in a gated cluster, and the front doors all face a charming little courtyard. It’s actually in Hyde Park, and my friend, Asa Farber, owns the property. I told him that you, Kola, Harper, and Jake would be by tomorrow to take a look around one.”
I smiled at him. “Thank you, brother,” I said, enunciating the word just like he had.
He sighed like I was just the worst, but gave me a begrudging grin when I walked around the table to hug him. Later, in the kitchen with Aja, she apologized.
“He gets so bent out of shape when he’s not asked for help,” she told me. “I’m sorry. I told him to just talk to you.”
“But we both know Dane likes to be consulted, even on things he can’t do anything about at all.”
She nodded.
“He wants to be asked.”
“I know,” she said, smiling at me.
My phone buzzed then with a text, and I saw that it was from Linda Spivey. She said she didn’t need me to find the letters, which I had been hunting for in the basement, as she had spoken to Steve and he had agreed to a DNA test. I had to know more, and so excused myself for a moment to go call her.
“Oh, Jory,” she said with a sigh. “You can’t imagine what a big mess all of this was.”
“Apparently,” I told Sam, Aja, and Dane over pie and coffee later, filling them in, “Steve thought all this time that Linda didn’t want anything to do with him after his father offered Linda’s father money to make the whole issue of a child go away.”