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“Try telling Olivia that. She was stubborn as all get out and hellbent on being independent. I can’t count the number of times the police brought her home after catching her shoplifting or drunk.”
I squeeze his hand. “I’m sorry. It couldn’t have been easy for you. Between raising your sisters and dealing with Olivia, when did you have time to grieve the loss of your parents?”
“I didn’t. After Gabrielle graduated from high school and went off to college, I went through a bad patch.”
“What’s a bad patch?”
“Drinking, gambling, raising hell. Getting into trouble any way I could.”
I’m uncertain what he means by getting into trouble, but the details aren’t important.
“And now?”
“I went to counseling, got my shit together.”
“But your sisters worry about you, so they followed you to Colorado?” I surmise.
He nods. “Exactly.”
“What about Olivia? She didn’t come with you.”
“She wasn’t leaving Saint Louis for some Podunk town.”
“Podunk town? White Bridge isn’t a small town. It has a population of over one-hundred thousand.”
“To her, it’s provincial.”
“She would hate Winter Falls.”
He shrugs. “We’ll see. You’ll meet her at Christmas.”
Christmas is months away. And he’s assuming we’ll still be together then. I smile. All signals are indicating taking a chance on Beckett was worth the risk.
“Now, for your first surprise.” He indicates a wind turbine. “Ta da!”
“It’s a wind turbine.” I study it for a minute. “It’s a General Electric 1.5 megawatt model. Its blades are 116 feet long and the tower is 212 feet tall. It weighs in at over 164 tons. The tower alone weighs about seventy-one tons.”
Beckett brings the car to a stop near the tower. “And we’re going inside it.”
“We are? I’ve always wanted to tour the inside of one.”
I missed my chance in college as Ashlyn was performing in the high school play on the day my class was scheduled to tour one. She was the lead in the play, and I couldn’t miss it. Had I known my baby sister would go on to study drama in college and perform in hundreds of plays, I would have skipped the high school play.
While I’ve been gazing at the wind turbine, Beckett exited the car and is now holding my door open for me. He offers me his hand and helps me out. He brings me flush to him and kisses me quickly before leading me toward the rear of the car.
He opens the trunk and hands me a helmet with a light and a climbing harness.
“We’re going all the way to the top?” The harness is unnecessary otherwise.
I don’t wait for him to answer before stepping into my climbing harness and affixing the helmet atop my head.
“What’s wrong?” he asks when he notices me bouncing from foot to foot. “Got ants in your pants?”
“Of course not. Where would I find ants? And why would they be in my pants? I’m excited.”
He chuckles as he motions me toward the wind turbine where a man is awaiting our arrival.
For the next hour, we take a tour of the turbine. There’s some climbing included and it’s hot and humid inside, but I don’t care. I ask our tour guide question after question, but he doesn’t seem to mind my inquisitiveness. In fact, when we shake hands at the end of the tour, he offers me a job.
