“Whoa.Like, just two people are going to put on a whole haunted house?”I asked.
“Susan and Allen are enjoying retirement.And Susan’s got more energy and verve in her than a kindergarten class.”
Nadia would know, she was a teacher (now on maternity leave), though, not a kindergarten teacher.Still.
I laughed, and doing it, felt Hutch’s eyes on me.
I looked to him.
“Love you’re having a good time, baby,” he said softly.“But it’s getting late, and we got a trek to get back.”
Nadia and Ledger exchanged goofy grins when he called me “baby.”
I ignored them.
“Right,” I said, pushing up from my ass on the floor.
Hutch pointed with one long finger to the arm of the chair he was sitting in, an arm that was opposite the arm where Gia was sitting, getting scratches on her head from her first daddy.
Yes, with all the good comes the bad, including as pertains to his testosterone levels.
I decided to dial back the sass in front of his friends and went to sit there to wait for Doc to come back.
He did, with a baby monitor, and as Nadia hustled to send a slice of cake with me (she didn’t bother with Hutch), and we said our goodbyes, I got the far more comprehensive BFF Auxiliary Eye Test from Doc.
I supposed I passed when he gave me a big hug inside my door and bid, “Stay safe.”
He spotted me up into Hutch’s truck even if, although it was high, I could pull myself up easily.But it was sweet he shut the door, slapped a hand on the roof and gave us a finger-to-the-forelock salute before he went to join Nadia and Ledger on their little front deck to watch us pull out.
“Nadia was a serious city girl when she got here,” Hutch said as he started us down their lane.“She couldn’t even hike herself up into a truck.”
He noticed everything.
“That explains that,” I replied.
He pulled out onto the road that would take us to the one to Misted Pines.
And I remarked, “Their house is wild.I’ve never seen a house so weird and interesting.Did Lincoln Whitaker really design that house?”
“Unsure.He wasn’t an architect.But he definitely had a heavy hand in it.”
“It must be strange to live there,” I noted, thinking of all the history.
“What built that place was love, loyalty and family,” Hutch returned.“What’s there now is the same.Unspeakable tragedy happened in the middle.But what that family built endures as it is today.”
He was also very wise.
“That’s a good way to look at it,” I mumbled.
“You’re really good with kids, May,” he remarked.
I smiled at him.“That’s because I’m just a big kid myself, Hutch.”
He returned my smile, but his was necessarily aimed at the windshield.
“You’re good with them too,” I said.
A small shrug and, “I dig kids.”
