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I left the study, perplexed beyond reason, but as soon as I got back to the guest house, Chandler was there waiting for me. “Hey, Kan.”
“What do I owe the visit?”
We sat on the porch steps, and he leaned over his knees. Chandler was struggling to tell me something, but he was too busy chuckling.
“What the hell is going on with you and your dad? You’re both being so…” It hit me then, and I laughed with him. “You told him.”
“Yeah. Well, he asked. We were both in the kitchen last night, getting another piece of Phoebe’s apple cake. After we sat at the counter and started eating, he brought it up. Did you…?”
“No. Not a word, I told you I wouldn’t. And?”
“He’s…he really is okay with it. More than okay with it,” he said with a sideways glance to me.
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. My turn not to break a confidence.” He rose as I was about to ply him with more questions. “I’m going back to bed. We talked half the night.”
“Go swimming later, or for a run and we’ll talk after. We need to get you ready for the city.”
“Yeah. I know.”
The worst part of all of it was I couldn’t grill either of them for information. It was Thursday, Gwen’s day off and she was heading there early. I promised to give her a tour of the house and property, and sure enough, she arrived, jumped out of her car, and showed me her new hiking boots.
“They cost a fortune, but they look good,” she boasted.
“Yes, they do. Come on, see the house first.”
I gave her a tour of the place, embarrassed my bedroom was messy, but otherwise, she oohed and awed all the way through. “And the big house is just like this?”
“Not exactly, but they’re pretty close. The same decorator and they wanted a smaller version of the big house.”
“It’s beautiful here. Damn, Kan, you moved up in the world.”
“I’m a glorified tutor at best, a babysitter for a teenager at worst.”
She winked and asked, “And Daddy?”
“Shut up,” I said, laughing. “He’s their dad. He’s the boss. What more do you want to know?”
She fell back on my sofa and giggled. “More. You said you guys run every morning. All hot and sweaty…”
“You’re a pig,” I accused.
“Guilty as charged. So?”
I had to talk to someone about the strange exchange that morning, so after giving her as minimal backstory as I could, I explained it and asked, “Do you think…I mean, what do you think?”
“Listen, for a man that’s only had two major relationships with women, and the way he smiled at you just at the diner…come on, Kan! You’ve got to be a little suspicious. Maybe talking about the son’s sexuality made him question his own. It’s been known to happen. A lot of people just go along with what they’re expected to do, never realizing those nagging thoughts in the back of their head are really telling them things they should listen to.”
“What if they’re telling you to…I don’t know, go on some killing rampage?”
She slapped my leg as I sat beside her. “You’re fucking awful.” She settled into the cushions of the comfortable couch and said, “You’re here for a while. Explore it.”
I managed to pull her off the subject long enough to go for a long hike. Gwen was amazed at the views, and she lived in the town. “I always heard this was the most beautiful part of the area, but I thought, how? The whole place is beautiful, but…they were right.”
“It’s great. Every morning, I get to look at different parts of this huge property. Rick is a good guide. I think he knows every inch of the place, which is insane, being it’s so big. He’s…smart though. Like super smart, and he loves this place too. It’s not just a bragging, family thing.”
While I was on my diatribe, she was staring at me, the smirk she wore was deep and made me shut my mouth.
