I send him a picture of Davy.
Salinger:You need to come get him.
Salinger:I can’t believe you didn’t know he was missing.
Hunter:Your problem now, asshole. You can deal with him until Monday.
“I can stay!” Davy freaks out, jumping on the coffee table and doing a backflip.
“Absolutely not. This is a huge liability!” I shout over the chaos. “I’m sending him back to Harrogate.”
“But he misses us,” Fitz complains.
“We were gone before he was even born.” I have my phone to my ear. Mandy’s not answering. The panic is coming back. I stuff it down as I call her again.
She picks up on the fourth ring. “I’m still packing.”
“Fine. I need a plane ordered.”
It sounds like she’s switched me to speakerphone. “Hi, Pepper!”
“Hi, Mandy!” my brothers call.
“Hi, Mandy!” Davy echoes.
There’s a pause on the line.
“Oh my gosh...”
“Is that your girlfriend?” Davy demands.
“Davy, you don’t get to be part of this conversation,” I chide.
He grins. “She is your girlfriend!”
I wave over Whitman. “Can you put him in a closet or something?”
“The pilots will have the plane ready at the executive airport in an hour and a half,” Mandy assures me. “Have a nice trip!”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Lies were spread about me!”Davy is shrieking as I carry him out of the car. “Character assassination! Help, I’m being oppressed!”
“Sir, we can’t fly with an unaccompanied minor, especially not one like that.” The pilot gives a pointed look at Davy, who’s shrieking like he’s been possessed. “One of you needs to come with him.”
“Not it,” McCarthy calls.
“I am not going to the East Coast,” I retort.
It takes another half hour for Hawthorne to drive over to the airport so he can accompany Davy back to New York. In the meantime, I’ve bribed my littlest brother with chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers. The kid happily chews his way through a twenty-piece box of nuggets while I try to keep him from smearing grease all over the leather seats of my plane—and prevent Pepper from eating the fast-food packaging.
Talking a mile a minute to the flight attendants about the new goat he’s raising for some sort of farm camp, Davy is right at home in the private plane. I would never admit it even under torture, but with his blond hair and gray eyes that look too big for his head, he is kind of adorable.
“You owe me,” Hawthorne warns when he climbs into the plane.
“You’re leaving, Salinger?” Davy cries.
“I’m busy.”
