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“Carolyn and I both had Roni as a student. Since I had her last, preteen age, she was a bit older. She was a quiet girl but friendly. She never made waves. She had friends but wasn’t in the popular group. I’d say she liked to stay down the middle in life.”
“That’s not Trent,” she said. “He’s always been outspoken, talkative, and upbeat.”
“Which is what Roni needs in her life.”
That was all fine, but she was Trent’s mother and wanted to make sure her son got what he needed in his life too.
“Why do you think she’d be good for Trent?”
“Because she isn’t going to demand a ton of time from him. He’s busy with his job and his new office. Roni is busy with her son. To the best of my knowledge, I don’t think Roni has dated much in years. It’s hard to get information out of her, but I’ve tried. She’s completely dedicated to Eli.”
That wasn’t a bad thing, but it could be too.
“What do you know about Eli’s father?”
“Again,” Diane said. “Not a ton. And it’s taken time to get it out of her. She’s never been married to Jeff. He lives in Raleigh and they’ve got shared custody. There is no support there financially, but she only has Eli four days on and four days off.”
“I don’t know if I could do that,” she said.
“I think she struggles with it, but it’s been like that from the moment Roni left Jeff. Why she did, I don’t know. She never says anything bad about her ex because that isn’t her way, but you can tell there is a lot of tension there.”
“Trent likes being a champion of people,” she mused.
“Yes. There is that too.”
“I guess we’ll have to see how it works. You’ve done well with my other two children so I’m going to trust you.”
“You can count on us,” Diane said. “But this might be a slow one.”
“With Trent, I don’t expect any differently. He has other things he’s focusing on now.”
“They all say that,” Diane said. “Which is why we’ve got to hit when they don’t expect it.”
“And we’ve got an inside secret source too,” she said, laughing.
13
Celebrate With Me
“What are you still doing here?”
Roni looked up and saw Trent opening the door to her office.
“Working,” she said. “You?”
“It’s almost six on a Friday night,” he said. “I’m going out on a limb Eli is with his father?”
She sighed. This was why she didn’t want people to know she had a child. It was hard to talk about at times, but it’s not like she’d seen Trent much in the past few weeks either.
That was a lie.
She saw him when he walked past her door, but he rarely came in to talk to her.
If she had any communication with his firm, it was through Janine or via email.
But she didn’t talk to the tenants all that much. Not unless they had problems or maintenance needs for her to schedule.
“He is,” she said. “I’ll pick him up on Sunday at five.”
