Page 105 of Seeing Harper

“Has no idea. I’m going to ask her to take a ride with me this evening and when she gets here he’ll already be in a stall. When she rushes to him and turns back to look at me, I’ll be on one knee with his halter and an extra set of keys in hand instead of a ring.”

“We’ll give you plenty of privacy to get it done.”

~~~

Harper, Summer, Libby, and Renata all lay on floats, lazily drifting back and forth across the Olympic size swimming pool Basilio had added to their back yard when the kids were still little.

“I can see why you’d prefer to be over here, Harper,” Libby said without lifting her head to look toward anybody.

“Yep. Nicer over here. Nobody making you feel bad for not wanting to live a redo of their lives,” Harper said.

“You ladies are welcome anytime. You have no idea how much fun I’ve been having these last few days with you here, too, Libby. I get tired of only having Basilio to talk to. I miss having girlfriends,” Renata said.

“I heard that!” Basilio shouted after he opened the sliding glass door that opened out onto the lanai.

“He hears everything he’s not meant to, and nothing he is meant to,” Summer said.

“It’s planned. Gives him time to think about things before he answers, and lets us know that he can always hear us when he’s not supposed to,” Renata said.

All four of the females in the pool laughed.

“And I like that sound,” he added, then closed the sliding glass door as he chuckled, leaving them to their girl time.

“Don’t you be telling Travis what we’re doing either!” Renata suddenly yelled, when she realized why Basilio was watching them so closely.

The sliding door opened again. “He’s my friend!”

“And I’m your wife. He made his bed.”

“He already knows they’re here and that they’re safe.”

“And that’s all he needs to know,” Renata insisted.

Basilio grumbled as he closed the door again.

“I’m sure that whenever you do decide to go home, your father will be much nicer to you, Harper,” Libby said.

“I’m sure. Especially after the riot act you read him,” Harper said.

“He’s lucky it’s all I did,” Libby said.

“I agree,” Renata said.

“Have you heard from him since you got here?” Summer asked.

“Oh, yes. Phone calls started right after I turned off the Life 360 tracker on my phone.”

Harper snickered.

“He says that he’s so very sorry and got caught up in his idea of what things would be like instead of taking the time to consider what you wanted. He agrees that he’s selfish and just wants us to come home so he can apologize.”

“And Joel?”

“Oh, he’s been gone. Your dad told him to get out or they’d never find his body because he’d feed it to his friends.”

“I still can’t believe he actually encouraged that jerk to try to spend time with me.”

“Yeah, he’s feeling really bad about that.”