“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I for one am really ticked off that you didn’t even try the produce thing,” Molly said with a huff.
“What’s the produce thing?” Kaiya asked.
“Don’t ask.” April held up her hand. “Trust me, it is not something any of us should entertain.”
“Okay, what about this?” Molly shifted and faced April. “Car seat fittings.”
“What?” April asked.
Rachel pressed her tongue against her teeth so she wouldn’t ask questions. Asking questions when Molly had ideas was not a good choice.
“We all love firefighters, right?” Molly asked. “I mean, did you see the calendar they did this year to raise money?” She fanned herself. “Do you know where a girl would go to meet a firefighter?”
“I have no idea,” Kaiya said. “Where do you go?”
Total mistake with all the questions.
“To the firehouse. But you can’t just walk on in there unless something is on fire. Unless”—Molly held up her finger like she’d just had a brilliant idea—“there is a car seat fitting.”
“You know what?” Kaiya said. “I went to one of those once and the guy who installed the seat was really cute and sweet. He even asked about special hand soap to get the gunk off his hands after he went on a call.”
“What else did he ask about?” Molly zeroed in on Kaiya. “Did he ask for your number?”
“Uh.” Kaiya looked from Rachel to April to Sadie. “Just so he could buy soap. He liked the idea of all-natural hand soap.”
“Hon,” Molly sat forward, elbows on her knees. She set her margarita on the table. “When a man asks about hand soap, he probably wants your number.”
“Here we go again,” Rachel said dramatically.
“Just stop, Molly!” April laughed. “Next you’ll be telling her to go skydiving with Kent.”
“Is he still doing that?” Molly asked.
“All the freaking time.” April let out a long breath. “It’s just a midlife-crisis thing. He’ll get over it soon enough.”
Rachel shivered. Jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft was not her idea of a “midlife-phase” anything.
No one needed to jump out of any moving transportation, as far as she was concerned. Not with the kids laughing in the background, fresh margaritas in the pitcher, and good friends to spend time with.
Rachel felt an expansion in her chest. She closed her eyes, soaking it all in.
“You know what?” Kaiya said finally. “I think Evelyn did get her way.”
If there was one thing that could ruin the goodness soak, it was the mention of Evelyn.
Rachel peeled one eye open.
“I’m not quite sure how you got from A to B on this one,” Sadie said, popping a bit of cookie into her mouth. “But I want to hear it because it doesn’t involve skydiving, produce, or car seat fittings.”
“Okay, hear me out. When you have a person who consistently acts in a certain way—always—and then all of a sudden they seem out of character,there’s something up. In this case, if we drill down Evelyn’s main plan, it wasn’t to keep Rachel and Travis apart, was it? It was to ensure that Travis and Gavin were happy, right?”
This made sense. Rachel nodded.
“I’m following you so far,” Sadie said.
“Despite everything that happened, that end resulthashappened. So Evelyn did get what she wanted, just not in the way that we expected.”
Huh. Rachel stared at Kaiya. She was totally right.
