Currant Creek Valley(9)
He grimaced at that thought and turned around to head back into the restaurant just as his cell phone rang. After a quick glance at the caller ID, his frown disappeared.
“Why, hello,” he answered. “If it isn’t my favorite son.”
“Favorite and only,” Ethan said primly.
Sam smiled, picturing his nearly seven-year-old’s dark curls and the blue, blue eyes he had shared with his mother. “Maybe so. But even if you had a half-dozen siblings, you’d still probably be my favorite.”
“That’s hypothetical, though. We can’t really know that for sure, can we?”
Hypothetical was apparently the word of the week. Last week it had been enumerate and the week before precocious. Spoken in that sweet young voice that still had a trace of a lisp, the hundred-dollar words always made Sam smile.
Love for his terrifyingly brilliant son was a sweet ache in his chest. “How is everything at Uncle Nick and Aunt Cheri’s?”
Ethan’s sigh was heavy and put-upon. “All right, I guess. I had to play Barbie dolls today with Amanda. I was Malibu Ken and she had Hula Barbie and they were supposed to be going on a date. I decided they should go on a date to the beach and we had them go surfing down the rain gutter in front of the house. How was I supposed to know Malibu Ken would fit down the sewer grate?”
“I bet that went over real well with your cousin.”
“Aunt Cheri made me stay in my room for an entire half hour. I don’t see why I had to be punished when it was simply an estimating error.”
“Life isn’t fair, is it?”
“Rarely, in my experience,” Ethan said glumly.
His son was six for a few more weeks but acted as if he was thirty-six most of the time.
“When can I come see Hope’s Crossing again, Dad?”
He grimaced, though there was no one but the lady across the street with her flowers to see. He missed his son already. “I’ll bring you up first chance I get, I promise.”
“I want to live with you for good in our own house, where I don’t have to play Barbies or share a room with somebody who still watches Barney.”
“I want that, too, more than anything. I’m working on it, I swear. Soon, okay? Six weeks. You have to finish the school year first and I need to find a decent place for us to live.”
“Six weeks seems like forever.”
“I know. To me, too. But we’ll spend every weekend together and before you know it, school will be out and you can come here for the summer when Uncle Nick and Aunt Cheri take off to Belgium. Then next fall you’ll have a whole new school and new friends.”
“I don’t want to go to a new school,” Ethan said, that stubbornness creeping into his voice.
“I know you don’t, son. But Hope’s Crossing is too far for us to drive to St. Augustine’s every day. If we’re going to live here, we’ll have to find a school here, too. Don’t worry. I’ve heard this one is terrific. You’ll see.”
Beyond the two-hour distance involved, Ethan attended a very elite private school. He had thrived at St. Augustine’s, where they celebrated his brain and had spent the past two years trying to stimulate it.
Move or not, he couldn’t continue there now. For one thing, Sam’s former in-laws had insisted on paying the hefty private school tuition but those funds had dried up a year ago.
They loathed Sam now. While they claimed they wanted to continue a relationship with Ethan, he couldn’t allow it, not when they filled his son’s head with lies and vitriol.
The whole thing was such a mess. When his late wife’s father had been arrested, the tuition payments stopped. Sam had managed to scrape together enough to keep Ethan at St. Augustine’s this year but he certainly couldn’t continue paying that much unless he wanted to deplete Kelli’s entire life insurance policy before Ethan even reached college age.
“You were going to have to go to a new school either way, kid. You know that. You couldn’t stay at St. Augustine’s. The schools here in Hope’s Crossing are supposed to be excellent. We’ll have all summer together to get ready for second grade.”
“I miss you,” Ethan said, his voice small.
“Oh, son. I miss you, too. It’s only a few weeks and then things will be better. You’ll see.”
“I guess.”
“Hang in there and be good for Uncle Nick and Aunt Cheri. I’ll call you every night to check on your homework and I’ll come home next weekend, okay?”
After a few more moments, he hung up with his son. As he gazed down at the picturesque little town, he decided he could use some of the town’s eponymous Hope.