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)
“Oh, I would love that. Please.”
“Happy to do it,” Sam assured her as Kola came walking into the living room.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he began, “but we’re a go for launch on the swing. We’re just waiting on you guys.”
“This is my son, Kola,” Sam said, introducing him. “Kola, this is Linda and Robert Spivey. Linda and I went to high school together.”
Kola moved around the table to offer his hand, smiling his real smile, the one that made his eyes glint. “Pleasure,” he said as he shook hands with each. “You should come check out the swing. It’s pretty awesome.”
“Oh no,” Linda tutted, “we don’t want to take up any more of your––”
“No, really, come on,” Kola insisted, “we’d love it.”
She nodded quickly as he darted out of the room. “Your son is charming,” she told me.
“Thank you.”
Robert and Linda came outside on the deck with us in time to watch Hannah swing out in the wide arc that had her sailing up as high as the roof of the Teruya house to the right of us and then out over our new neighbors in the back.
“Oh my goodness,” Linda gasped. “I would be so scared.”
“No, it’s completely safe,” Kola promised. “Jake, that’s my buddy right there”—he pointed—“he’s an engineer, and he knows what he’s doing.”
“With engineering,” Harper chimed in. “Nothing else.”
Both Linda and Robert laughed over that and smiled at Harper as Kola introduced them. I offered them dinner, but they turned me down. I got Linda’s number and gave her mine, because honestly, I would be the one digging through boxes, not my husband. Sam was one of those people who tended to rifle. That meant that it was like a cyclone hit anything he went through. To search methodically, carefully, that was me. He did promise to get back to her on whether or not Mario or Janine would be up for talking.
Once they were gone, the kids circled us.
“What was that about?” Hannah wanted to know.
Sam explained, and all four of them were horrified.
“I can’t believe she thought you wouldn’t own up to getting her pregnant.” Hannah was upset for Sam. “As if that was ever something you’d do.”
“Thank you, daughter,” he teased her.
“I’m serious.”
“No, I know. And I appreciate it.”
“Her father sounds like a piece of crap,” Jake chimed in. “I mean what, he took money from this guy Steve’s family to keep quiet about his daughter getting pregnant?”
“It certainly sounds like it,” Sam agreed.
“At least if she talks to Steve now, she’ll know what happened,” Kola surmised.
“If he’s honest about it,” Hannah replied, sounding sad. “And that guy Dennis, he would have raped her if your friend Mario wasn’t there.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah. Mario was the hero. Him and Janine.”
“Yeah,” Kola said, nodding, sounding strange.
“What?” I prodded.
He shook his head.
“Kola?”
“No, it’s—right before we moved, Jake and I were at our favorite taco truck getting food, and we see this guy walking this girl out of a bar and she’s, like, staggering, you know? So Jake asks him if he needs help, and he’s all ‘no, man, my girlfriend’s just wasted.’”
“But you didn’t believe him?”
“No,” Kola answered. “She kept trying to tell him to give her her phone and he wouldn’t, so I went over there, and I’m almost to them when he drops her and runs.”
“That’s crazy,” Hannah gasped.
“Yeah,” Kola murmured. “I mean, I got to her before she face-planted, but she’s on the sidewalk and I’m holding her up in case she pukes and her phone’s ringing and Jake answers and tells—who was it?”
“Her brother,” Jake supplied.
“Yeah, so Jake tells her brother we got her, and he asks where we are, and it turns out she was supposed to go to the bar to get more drinks but she never came back to the table.”
“And they didn’t look for her?” I was confused.
“They did,” Jake assured me. “But they weren’t that worried, ’cause when she went to the bar, she was fine.”
“So someone put something in her drink?”
“That’s what her brother thought. He got to us with his girlfriend and her friends, and he said she was not at all like she was when she left the table.”
“That fast?” Hannah was horrified.
Kola nodded. “Yeah. It’s all about the metabolism, right? Everyone’s is different.”
“True,” I agreed. “Remember when you were little, I had to give you more frequent doses of Tylenol or ibuprofen because you’re a rapid metabolizer and everything moves so quickly through your system.”
He smiled at me. “Yeah, and remember when I was diagnosed with ADHD and they tried all those different kinds of medicine and nothing worked.”
“Nothing worked because you don’t have ADHD,” Sam reminded him. “We found that out when we finally took you to see Dr. Li, Dane’s doctor, who said you were misdiagnosed.”
“Of course what really sold your father on Dr. Li was that he had a colleague of his, in another practice, confirm his diagnosis,” I pointed out to Kola.