“Now, now, Pumpkin!” Grandma entered the conversation with a playful chiding voice that instantly had me on edge, since the last time we spoke to each other wasn’t exactly on good terms. “She gave you a compliment. A well deserved one, as I see. Take it as one.”
“Grandson.” I heard Grampa’s voice next, as he greeted me with a nod.
“Grandfather.” I imitated his tone as I returned the nod, before I returned to my work, not eager to start a discussion.
“I see you were busy.” he continued while looking around the room.
Mom and Ava were keeping themselves to the background, though they were looking at me with disturbingly bright smiles.
“Yeah.” I sighed somewhat exhausted. “Bathroom’s done and ready to be stocked. So is the kitchen. I also put in the carpet in Maggie’s room. Good thing you brought them along, because I get the feeling the bigger furniture is not meant to be dragged around after assembly.”
“I told them not to buy all that cheap Swedish stuff.” he shook his head, with an expression of silent suffering.
“It would have cost us a fortune to buy solid wood furniture, Dad!” John called out, as he and Danny entered the house carrying baskets full of small decorations and dust catchers. “Girls, how about you go into your rooms and figure out what goes where.”
With this, Ava and Maggie, followed by Granny, skipped into Maggie’s room first, from where we could hear their vivid discussion. Though, Ava planted a kiss on my cheek as she passed me.
“So, I take it, furniture alone wasn’t enough?” I asked, gesturing to the baskets John and Danny were carrying.
“Of course not!” Danny revolted. “They’ll have to
“If you say so.” I chuckled.
My chuckle died down when Mom took possession of my arm, the guilt flaring up yet again, though she didn’t let herself be influenced by that and simply kept smiling happily at me. She also kept that up the entire time we walked through the condo, so I could show them how much I had accomplished so far.
After everyone had gotten a firm grasp of what was left to do, we started assembling all the furniture, while Grandpa was outside taking care of the little green patch in front of the condo. Only then did Mom finally let go of me, though she and Ava made sure to stay close to me.
It took two hours before I finally managed to signal John that I wanted to catch him alone. Since the others were now all working in Ava’s room, I walked into the third bedroom which was furthest away from them and, about a minute later, John joined me.
“Sorry about showing up with the entire family in tow.” he started before I could even open my mouth. “Claire and Ava showed up this morning to talk with Danny, and then I couldn’t find a plausible excuse to not let the others come with me.”
He looked surprisingly guilty about this. And, as if to prove his point, Danny walked through the door at that moment to wordlessly stand next to him, regarding me with a curious look.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t think you’d call them intentionally after I told you that I needed to talk.” I waved his concern off. “So ... that contact you had for cleaning the money. Is that still an option?”
He thought about that for a moment.
“I guess so.” he mused, but then he looked at me alarmed. “This isn’t about Aaron taking your money, is it?”
“No.” I said, feeling embarrassed again. “You heard about that, huh?”
“Yes. Sorry. When the girls start talking, they’re not exactly quiet about it.” he chuckled, earning him a slap on the chest from his visibly unamused wife.
“Yeah. Great. Anyway!” I quickly continued to steer the topic away from what happened, not thrilled about prospect of learning how much they actually knew, and handed him the sports bag. “Think you can get them to clean that too?”
He opened the bag, looked inside, and then looked at me.
“That’s more than the last time.” he deadpanned with a raised eyebrow, as Danny pulled the bag towards her to look inside as well.
“It’s $450,000.” I informed him, and saw his second eyebrow lift to join the first one while Danny choked a little.
“Correct me if my math is wrong.” he started slowly, with a suspicious tone. “But, that would make $600,000 dollars you gave me to clean so far. Didn’t you say that you only kept ‘two or three’ bricks?”
“Well, I lied.” I shrugged, seeing their eyes widen in realization. “Shocker, I know! Do you think you can get them to clean it? If they keep their previous rate, they’d need sixty smurfs, and we should come out with $390,000.”
“The warehouses aren’t the problem. They have hundreds. Though, that amount could draw attention on our side if it comes in too quickly. Maybe we should let them work on it over the next few months. How quickly do you need it?”
“Three months, at the earliest.” I said, and he nodded. “So, since you two seem to have all the insight ... Why does Mom seem so disturbingly happy today?”
