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The sisters moved their deck chairs closer together so they could both look at Ayla’s phone.
“Here it is. He went to Stanford, and then Northwestern for grad school,” Ayla narrated his bio. “Before that, he’d gone to a boarding school in Connecticut. But… it looks like he actually graduated from Oasis Academy. That’s that rich kid’s school out in Summerlin. It’s like $30,000 a year to go there.”
“Naturally, that’s where you’ll be sending Preston, right?” Amy asked, sarcastically.
“Oh, absolutely,” Ayla assured her. “I wonder if they’ll give me a break on tuition if I wanted to pay for first grade thru twelfth all at once?”
“I’m sure they’d be willing to work with you. Maybe knock off a thousand,” Amy joked.
“In that case, I’d just pay cash. I can’t figure why everybody doesn’t send their kids there!”
“Well, that’s interesting, actually,” Amy said. “Do you remember my friend Char, from high school? Charmaine Anderson?”
Ayla nodded. She knew the name, even if she couldn’t place a face with it.
“Char dated a guy, for like a year, who went to Oasis. He was a total douchebag, but she got to go to their prom,” Amy explained. “The school rented out a club at the Hard Rock for it. Can you believe that shit?”
“Only in Vegas,” Ayla said,
“Only at Oasis Academy,” Amy countered. “No other school had anything like that. She said it made our prom look like, I don’t know, a middle school dance. She said people were arriving in Hummer limos and that a helicopter even landed in the parking lot to drop off two couples.”
“What?” Ayla asked, in stunned disbelief.
“Yep, true story. I thought I told you about it. Maybe not. Anyway, Char told me that the girls there were fierce. Like hair and makeup and jewelry you’d usually only see on a red carpet. She said she felt completely out of place.
“Anyway, I wonder if Char’s prom date knew Winston Watterson at all. Or, check his Wiki – does it say if he has any siblings who might have been there?”
Ayla scrolled back up to the top of the page. “He has two sisters. One older, one younger. The older one is… Wanda, she’s married to some Russian gazillionaire. The younger one is… well, I guess she works for Watterson, she’s not linked, it just has her name, Wendryn.”
“That family loves W’s,” Amy noted. “Let me run this whole thing through Char. It would be a shot in the dark, I mean she may not even know the guy from Oasis anymore. But maybe he knew one of the Wattersons.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Ayla agreed. “Preston! Stop!”
Ayla stormed across the yard to make her son return a dinosaur he’d snatched from Amy’s crying three-year-old son.
“Crisis averted,” Ayla announced when she returned to the porch.
“Never for long. All they do is fuss and fight. I’d have thought having a boy and a girl would make them get along better than two of the same sex, but no, it’s a constant struggle. I guess being so competitive will serve them well when they get older, but right now it sucks.”
Amy typed on her phone as she complained about her kids.
“Alright, I sent Charmaine a PM. She’s in Phoenix, she usually gets back to me pretty quickly, we’ll see.”
The kids played until it was time for Amy’s to take a nap and for Ayla and Preston to leave for Dodger Stadium.
As they walked out to the car, Amy followed and pulled her sister aside. “Char just got back to me. She said she’s actually friends with the guy on Facebook. He’s a hotshot lawyer in Texas somewhere now. She said she doesn’t really talk to him talk to him, but that she’d message him and ask if he knew any Wattersons.”
“Okay, cool. But yikes, I must look like a crazy stalker going through my sister’s classmates’ prom date from ten years ago to get me closer to meeting this guy.”
“Oh, Ayla, you have no idea. I’m obsessed now. And you know me, I?
?m like a bulldog. Once I set my mind on something, I can’t stop until it gets resolved. If I have to apply for a job with Watterson Gaming and get an interview in order to get into their offices and maybe bump into Winston or Mick, I’ll do it.”
“I know you will, that’s why I love you, sis. But do me a favor and please don’t do that. Having a nutcase for a potential future sister-in-law might not be the best selling point for me.”
“Mom! We’re going to be late!” Preston called from the end of the driveway, by Ayla’s car.
Ayla rolled her eyes, thanked her sister for the umpteenth time for the tickets, hugged her, and strolled down to join her son and, soon, the world famous Los Angeles freeway traffic.
