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“You mean,” Delanie said, “how you told me that you and Booth were together? I was going to tell you, but I thought it’d be cooler to find out how long it took you to say something and call me on it.”
I rolled my eyes and patted Delanie on her ass.
When she went to put her feet down, I clenched her butt in my hands and walked up toward the porch steps.
When I got up them, I turned for my own swing and sat down with Delanie sitting easily in my lap.
Everybody was off today despite it being a school day. They were all attending Jason’s funeral with me this afternoon, which I assumed was why Ellie was trying to make herself busy.
She didn’t want to think about what was to come today and instead had buried herself into work.
“I got a call from Ellie,” I said softly.
“Ellie?” Dillan asked.
Booth came out of his front door.
“Ellie was the wife of the police officer that just died,” Booth said as he picked Asa up and placed him into his lap as he wrapped his arm around Dillan. “How you feeling?”
Dillan scrunched up her nose. “Less pukey than twenty minutes ago, but no less pukey than I normally feel lately.”
Delanie snorted and rested her head against my shoulder. I bent my neck and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
When I turned back straight, it was to see Booth staring at me with deliberation.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just wondering if I need to have a talk with you about hurting my girl’s sister.”
Delanie snorted beside me. “He’s never going to hurt me, at least not intentionally. It’s more likely you need to have a talk with me because I’m the emotional one.”
Booth’s eyes turned from me to Delanie. “Don’t hurt him either. How about that?”
Dillan snorted and pulled her legs up so she could curl her arms around them.
“There will be no hurting anywhere by anyone.” She paused. “Do you hear that, Asa?”
Asa looked at her lazily.
“Hear what, Aunt Stepmom Dillan?” Asa asked.
That’s when we all burst out laughing.
It would be the last time we laughed that day.
The last time we did some laughing for quite a long while, actually.
***
“…it says in this one that Dad is in debt up to his eyeballs.” Delanie handed the paper over to me. I scanned it and saw the same thing she saw. His financials—the most current ones—glaringly obvious.
“What the hell?” I asked. “If he didn’t have any money, why the hell would he go out of his way to buy your house?”
“Because he didn’t have anywhere else to live,” Booth said as he shoved some more papers toward me. “He got out of the military, and his housing allowance stopped. He had to find a place to live, and why not one that his daughters already so graciously got for him? He used the last bit of his savings and 401K to purchase it.”
He passed over the paperwork that he’d been looking at, but I ignored it.
Putting the paperwork down, I had no idea what all of this meant.
“You have to get it,” Dillan said. “Being a governor means he gets paychecks for life from now until whenever he feels like dying. This is his ticket out of whatever hole he’s dug himself into. There’s no rule saying that you have to be rich to be governor. And, even better, he gets to be someone of power. One of his favorite things. Plus, don’t you get to live in the governor’s mansion when you become governor?”
I had no idea, but that might explain a few things.
“The real question is how all of his money disappeared,” someone pointed out.
Asa.
Why was Asa in this?
“Where did you come from? I thought you were in bed,” Delanie said, standing up.
“I was, but I came out and got a drink of water.” He paused. “Uncle Bourne, are you still picking me up from school tomorrow? Remember, it’s early release. Twelve-thirty.”
I nodded my head. “I am. I’ll be there. Don’t worry. But, just a reminder, you have a doctor’s appointment, too.”
Tomorrow was the last day of his school session for the summer. He would start regular school back up in August.
I could tell that he was excited to be spending some more time with his family.
“That’s a very good question indeed,” Delanie said as she picked him up. “But something that you don’t need to concern yourself with.”
Asa sighed. “It kind of concerns me when I’m the one he wants to hang out with. I don’t want to. He seems really weird.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Priscilla had called earlier to tell us he had some weird people coming over to the house. Ones that she got a really bad vibe about.
But, since there was nothing that we could do about that for now, we would just have to note it down as odd behavior and file it away in ‘things we didn’t like about David.’
