Page 83 of Statler

“Tomorrow?” he asked, his brain still not quite back to normal.

“Yeah. You know. Because my father wants me to keep an eye on you?” she reminded his dumb-ass.

Duh. How could he have forgotten.

Now that she’d jogged his memory out of momentary melancholia, there was one more thing they’d almost forgotten.

“Sherb,” Statler yelled toward the group still lingering on the porch. “Have you got that transcription for Eliza?”

Dizzy, not Sherbert, came trotting up, paper in hand.

“Just waiting for you to give us the all clear, boss. From…you know,” he teased, winking as he handed the page over. “Good night, Eliza. See you tomorrow.”

He jogged back to the crew.

Of course.

Leave it to the asshole to remember that Eliza would be on the job site the following day around noon, when Statler’s recall had completely malfunctioned.

Statler wanted to smack his head.

Eliza shuffled her feet a bit, as if waiting for Statler to speak, and when he didn’t, she turned to open her car door, getting in and giving him a little wave of her hand.

“Bye, Statler.”

“Goodbye, Eliza.”

It was hard to keep the disappointment out of his voice. He’d wanted to kiss her again, but he guessed this was the way they were doing things.

He closed her door, and as she dropped the car into gear and took off, he let out the huge sigh that had been building in his chest, then walked back to his crew.

“Well?” Pipes asked with a cheeky grin. “How were the ‘stars’?”

“Great,” Statler huffed. “Just great.”

Blue was shaking her head. “You guys decided to put things on hold, didn’t you?” she questioned with a purse of her lips.

“We did,” Statler agreed. “You know it’s for the best,” he argued. “William is her father, for God’s sake.”

“And you, more than most people, understand that you can’t choose your relatives,” Hazard put in.

Yeah. His family had been…dysfunctional, to say the least.

“I get it,” Statler agreed. “But she did choose Holden,” he pointed out.

He had them, there.

“Who we know was not a bad guy, but was working behind the scenes to shut things down,” Sherbert reminded him. “And Eliza has no clue that by distancing himself, he was probably trying to protect her from things going on at the factory; a noble gesture, him backing off from their relationship.”

Statler hated that, but he concurred.

“Yeah. She’s definitely bitter that his personality and the way he treated her changed so drastically during the last year of his life,” Statler lamented, running a frustrated hand back through his hair. “She really deserves to know that he died in a heroic attempt to save her from the worst.”

“But we can’t tell her that. Not yet. Because then she’ll know for sure that he was murdered.” Blue paused. “Although I have an inkling that she already has her suspicions.”

“I agree,” Statler said. “She’s too savvy not to have been putting two and two together, but luckily she’s also smart enough to keep her head down so she remains safe.”

“What are you going to do now?” Blue asked.