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“What, you little pest?”
“Want up!”
Chandler laughed and picked up his brother, sitting him on his lap. “Tell Dad you want turkey too.”
“Want turkey like Chan!”
Rick said, “I’m outnumbered. Fine, turkey for everyone.”
As we ate around the kitchen table, Colby kept us entertained with his enthusiasm for his sandwich and chips. Rick watched his son with such love, it made him glow. Then, Chandler laughed more watching his brother than I thought he could smile.
It was a moment when I saw the family differently. I thought Chandler was much further from the others than he was, but I knew why. He presented himself to be and it was probably purposely and subconsciously at once. He was about to leave, and that would be hard for him, so it was easier to push his family away to save some of that pain.
I understood that. If I could have been angry at my parents, maybe it would have been a little easier to lose them. That was the thing. I was rarely angry with them.
“What are you all doing this afternoon? I’m taking Colby to town for a few hours to work with me.”
“I figure we’ll start a routine, get some things listed off we want to accomplish,” I told him. “I’m going to pose the new start time to him and see if it sticks,” I mentioned, laughing.
“What start time?”
Rick winked at me and whispered, “Oh, this should be fun.”
Chapter Eight
Wetookawalkinstead of a run, but he wasn’t totally opposed to the idea of that if we started later than dawn. “It’s summer. It gets hot,” I tried to reason.
“We’re in the mountains. It never gets all that hot. Besides, I have to get used to the weather being warmer if I go to a school in a warmer climate. I got my UCLA acceptance last fall.”
I stopped and gaped at him. “Your father didn’t say.”
“He doesn’t know. I got accepted by seven schools. I applied to a bunch and got them all except one. I think Loyola, though, is my top pick.”
“He told me you were going to UC Boulder.”
“I got accepted. That was the only one he knew about. I…”
“Want to leave home and not just go a couple hundred miles away.”
“Yeah,” he said, gloomily.
We were walking again, out behind the tennis courts and pool, on a well-worn trail that wove through a beautiful pine and aspen forest. “You’ll tell him soon?”
“I have a lot to confess to him. I…don’t want to disappoint him.”
“Will that matter? I mean, he wants you close to home, but will he be upset about places like UCLA or Loyola?”
“Yes. It’s a family thing. His father, his father before that, him, of course. It’s expected that I go Ivy League, but Dad…he wants me closer than that.”
I was confused, as Rick didn’t seem the type to push his kids in any direction. Still, I didn’t know him. “Did he say that?”
“No. He’s the one that gave me and my student advisor the list.”
I really wanted Rick to be innocent of that. It was because I liked Rick, and that was besides my attraction to him. “Did he say those close to home and only those?”
“Why are you sticking up for him? Are you into him or something?”
There was no way to know what my face did in that moment, but whatever it was, Chandler huffed a short laugh. “Figures.”
