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She wouldn’t be as in your face as Jayce, but she’d get Elise to admit things in front of his parents, he was positive.
“Please, come in and have a seat,” his mother said. “Can we get you something to drink? I’m just getting ready to put some snacks out. Dinner won’t be until closer to two.”
It was just shy of twelve now.
“Jayce will be here soon,” he said. “He’s packing after he did laundry. You know, he had one load worth but broke it up into two small ones.”
“Don’t let Gabe do your laundry,” his father said. “Ever. Unless you don’t care that white towels could turn into colored towels. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
He looked at his father and saw the laughter in his eyes. “I was trying to help,” he said. “I don’t get credit for that?”
“I’m not sure if you know, but I was sick when Gabe was in high school,” his mother said. “I had cancer and went through chemo for several months. My kids, all of them, were wonderful along with my husband. But Gabe ruined my white towels by washing them with his jeans and funky socks.”
Elise started to laugh. “Were they rainbow when he was done?”
“Pastels,” his father said. “I went out and bought all new towels so Stacy didn’t know.”
“I knew,” his mother said. “It’s hard to not know when your towels are all replaced. Gabe confessed and said he was sorry. I found it sweet he was trying.”
“She says she finds it sweet now in front of Elise,” Gabe said.
“That’s right,” his father said. “I heard more than once that I had to banish Gabe from certain tasks. He could wash his clothes and his clothes only. Towels need to be separated.”
He couldn’t believe all this was being discussed in front of him. “Why don’t we air out all my faults now to get them out of the way?”
“That would be fun,” Jayce said, coming into the room. “But I just got an earful after I embarrassed Gabe at his house.”
“What did you do?” Jocelyn asked. “Put a white glove on and walk around?”
“Pretty much,” he said. He looked at Elise and noticed she was grinning at this.
“I find it funny,” she said. “But Gabe isn’t all that bad. Or I should say he’s better than he was before.”
“I’ve never seen anything worse than his dorm room,” his mother said. “At the end of the year it was so gross. I guess that is why he had a new roommate every year.”
It was the last thing he wanted brought up.
He looked at Elise and she shrugged.
“You two went to Clemson at the same time,” his father said. “Did you ever cross paths?”
He was glad his sister didn’t ask that, but he caught her looking away.
He turned to Elise to see how she’d answer.
“We ran into each other a few times,” Elise said.
“Oh,” his mother said. He gave her the stare he did as a kid to stop and she got the hint.
He was positive that just gave away more than he ever wanted known to his family and expected he’d be answering questions at another point in the future.
“How did it go?”Carolyn asked Stacy later that day.
Stacy had been dying to call and give the Fierces an update. She decided to just call Carolyn and let her pass the information on. She didn’t always like having everyone on the call at once.
“Better than I thought it would,” she said. “Elise is a sweetheart. She made Gabe’s favorite dessert for him.”
“That was nice of her,” Carolyn said.
