Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 36987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 185(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 185(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
“Say something,” she finally snapped at her brother. “You’re the shrink.”
“Are you kidding?” he asked her, sounding so horrified, I snickered.
“What in the world can possibly be funny about any of this?” she railed at me.
“Sin,” Kurt scolded her, “George saved your kids.”
“Oh God,” she gasped, leaning forward and taking hold of my shoulder. “I’m so sorry and so grateful and—”
“Screw that,” I said, turning to look at her. “Saving or no saving, I laughed at you wanting some input from the only person qualified to dispense advice in the whole car.”
“Yes,” she whispered, rubbing at her eyes.
I turned to look at Kurt’s profile. After a moment, he quickly glanced at me before his eyes returned to the road.
“What?” he asked.
“She wants you to say something profound.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“So go ahead. Let’s hear it.”
“I don’t dispense advice on command.”
I chuckled because he was all puffed up and bent out of shape. “All right, then, so this is what I think.” I took a breath. “I think Thom deserves to be super pissed at Brad for doing her thinkin’ for her like she’s not perfectly capable of figuring the ins and outs of her own goddamn business.”
“Yes. Exactly,” she agreed.
“But come on, Thom, the idea of selling houses you’ve only redecorated…” I grimaced. “You had to know that was crap.”
“I… In hindsight, yes.”
“And in fairness to Brad, it wasn’t your core business he was helping with. It was a new thing you were trying out that you were looking to him to make successful.”
“That’s absolutely correct,” Brad chimed in.
“You thought you were doing the right thing.”
“I did,” he stressed to me, then to his wife, “I really did.”
“And you, Thom, gave up oversight over your new business because you weren’t certain about it but went forward with it anyway.”
“That’s true.”
“It’s like you let Brad run with it because it was not in your wheelhouse.”
Kurt said, “And because you trusted him to make all the decisions on something that was not tested and might or might not be profitable, you sort of threw him in the deep end. He had all your hopes and dreams on his plate, plus the expectation of success.”
She sighed deeply. “That’s true too.”
“Your mistake, Brad,” Kurt continued, “was not telling her that the new business was not profitable.”
“Yeah,” he muttered.
“Instead of disappointing her, you overextended yourself and then had to cover the debt with loans from unscrupulous people.”
“Unscrupulous people?” I repeated with a snort of laughter.
“What should I have said instead?”
“Psychopaths who are trying to kill him and his wife and ransom his sons.”
Kurt rolled his eyes.
“No? You think I’m being dramatic?”
“Well, obviously not, as we’re driving to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night to hide from a murderous loan shark your friend is going to…what? Kill?”
“Along with everyone else involved, yeah.”
Big audible catch of breath from everyone.
“Really?” Brad finally said. “That lovely young woman is going to kill people?”
“What? No. The guy in the car is.”
“Oh, I didn’t see him,” Thomasin rushed out. “I thought she was the hitman. Or hitwoman.”
“Contract killer,” Kurt corrected her. “Hitman is no longer the appropriate term.”
“Probably hasn’t been since The Godfather came out,” Brad chimed in.
“You know, I’ve never seen that movie,” Thomasin confessed.
“Are you kidding?” Her husband sounded horrified.
“No, Brad, I’m not kidding.”
“Well,” Kurt said, “since we’re wintering with George, maybe we can pick a night and watch it if the cabin has Wi-Fi.”
“Doing what with George?” she asked him.
“Wintering,” Kurt replied. “Like, you know, digging in, hibernating, as it were.”
“I don’t—”
“We need to get a tree,” Brad interrupted her. “And figure out how to decorate it for the boys. We have the opportunity for an off-the-grid, but warm, holiday celebration.”
She jolted like something had surprised her.
“Sin?” Kurt asked, concerned.
“I just—that’s true, isn’t it? I mean, I grabbed the gifts, but I had things coming to the house that—”
“Same for me,” Brad assured her. “The big things, we have, but there’s usually so much more, and now…”
“Now it has to be enough,” she stated. “It’s so strange, but there’s normally so many people around, and with only the six of us…what a small celebration we will have.”
“Which is fine,” I said because they both sounded so sad. “We can play games.”
Kurt did a slow pan to me.
“What?”
“Who are you?”
“I’ll have you know I’m kick-ass at trivia.”
“You’re a liar. You hate trivia.”
“And you know this how?”
He had to look away to keep his eyes on the road. “You’ve never taken any interest in my weekly trivia nights with my friends at the pub.”
“For starters,” I said with a grimace, “pub? What’re we, in Ireland? It’s a sports bar, and you and your friends wear those stupid bowling shirts and look ridiculous.”
Thomasin started chuckling, which was good to hear.
“And what is your team name, like the Head Shrinkers or something?”