“Good. My parents, as you’ve seen, are the type to get involved in everything.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of funny but I noticed they sort of parentall of your friends, too,” Scarlet said. Her father was more the hit-on-her-friends type, which was kind of what she thought the norm was until she’d come to Cole’s Hill. Of course, she’d seen families like the Velasquezes on TV and in the movies but they’d never seemed real to her.
“They do. Mainly I think it’s because we all grew up around here and they’ve known all of my friends since they were little kids,” Alec said.
“I like it,” she said. “I think Tara would have liked it, too.”
“I wish I’d met her,” Alec said. “She was very important to you, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“What was the craziest thing you two did growing up?” he asked. “Mo and I were always in trouble so our kid is going to get the mischief gene.”
Our kid.
Like they were a couple.
Panic started to rise in her, laced with a bit of hope that she didn’t even acknowledge.
Tell him about me, Tara’s voice whispered.
“She was always good at surprising me with something fun. We went to different boarding schools and the year after our mom died, I was pretty miserable. One night I was lying in my bed at the dorm when I heard this scratching at the window.
“I opened it up and glanced down to see Tara standing down below. She had this large branch in her hands and had been scraping it across the glass.”
Scarlet took a sip of her drink.
“She waved at me to come out and I sneaked down to meet her. She took my hand and we ran as fast as we could to a taxi she had waiting and she ordered him to take us to the beach. It was the middle of the winter, freezing cold, because my school was in Massachusetts. But when we got to thebeach, we went and stood on the sand and waited. And I asked her what we were waiting for and she said we’d see Mom’s angel at sunrise.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Alec said. “I wish my brother were so thoughtful. Instead, Mo smacked me on the head with a pillow until I woke up one time so I could hand him his stuffed dog, Scratchers, who’d fallen out of the top bunk.”
“Poor baby. Mo is such a bully,” Scarlet said, jokingly.
“Yeah, he was. But Tara sounds like she took care of you,” Alec said.
“Sometimes. She had her own problems, too. One time she deliberately crashed her sunfish sailboat into mine to keep me from winning a Fourth of July regatta at our yacht club.”
“That I can relate to. Inigo was always superfast on bikes or go-carts or even golf carts so we’d sometimes crash into him to keep him from winning... But it hasn’t hurt him. It probably made him even better at racing,” Alec said.
“I’m sure.”
“Have you ever thought about having more kids?” he asked. “Or do you think this one will be it?”
He had a right to ask her that question, she thought, but at the same time she didn’t want to answer. She wasn’t even sure what she was going to do about the baby she carried right now. “I haven’t. I’m not at all ready to think about that.”
“Fair enough. I’m not, either. I just didn’t know if you dreamed of a big family,” he said, clearing away the dinner dishes.
“I didn’t dream of a family at all. I figured I’d be doing my thing by myself forever,” she said.
“Ready for dessert?” he asked because he wasn’t sure how to react to her answer.
“I’m good for now,” she said.
“Okay.”
He sat back down and they both sort of stared at eachother. She wished she could read his mind. Know what he was thinking. This dinner he’d asked her to dress up for was more than just their usual get-together. And he was coming to mean more to her than she wanted to really admit.
“You really outdid yourself tonight,” she said.