“I have to tell him,” she said urgently. She threw off the covers and stood up. “He doesn’t need to do this at all. We can provide for him!”
She glanced back at Carlos, suddenly self-conscious. “Not to—not to make statements about what you’re going to be doing with your money.”
Carlos stood up, too—every glorious naked inch of him, and despite the seriousness of the situation, Pauline found herself momentarily distracted—and took her hands. He kissed her knuckles and said, “Pauline, from this moment forward, I’m telling you: it’s your money. I trust you one hundred percent to do what’s right with it. And taking care of three kids with no parents seems like a great place to start.”
“Well, I’m certainly not going make unilateral decisions without even talking to you,” Pauline said tartly. “It’s not my money, it’s our money, how about that.”
Even that was difficult to understand. She was going to have to sit down and process through this sometime soon. And then sit down with Carlos and some financial statements and really work out what it meant, this is our money. And probably try not to faint in the process.
“That, right there, is why I trust you with it,” Carlos said, smiling.
“Okay.” Pauline blew out her breath, then looked around. “Clothes. Drew’s going to be here soon, and I’m going to have to try to convince him—show him—”
“He might not listen,” Carlos cautioned. “I bet that kid has a lot of reasons not to believe in fairy tales. And I’m not carrying a wand and summoning a pumpkin coach. He’s going to need some time to think about it, to reach a point where he trusts that what we’re saying is true.”
“But he’s going into something dangerous now!”
Carlos was getting dressed, quick and efficient. “And we’re going to do everything we can to prevent that,” he said. “But we can’t make his decisions for him.”
“Maybe kidnapping is an option,” Pauline grumped, pulling on a sweater.
Carlos kissed her forehead as it emerged from the neckline. “That probably won’t help with the trusting part of the equation.”
It was so frustrating. A solution existed. She just needed an independent, stubborn, scared seventeen-year-old to realize it.
She took a deep breath. “Well, this is what parenting would be like, I guess.”
“Frustrating and terrifying?”
Pauline nodded. “And more rewarding than anything in the world, eventually. I hope.”
She hoped.
The doorbell rang.
“He’s here!” Pauline yelped, and galloped out to answer it. But when she opened it, she was faced with a sleepy-faced Troy, holding a yawning Val’s hand—and Drew was halfway to his car.
“Wait!” she called. “Drew, wait, you don’t have to do this, I promise we can make is so that you don’t have to—”
Drew looked back over his shoulder, then shook his head. “I said I’d be there. If I don’t show up, they’ll come find me, and they’ll hurt the kids.”
“They might hurt you,” Pauline said desperately.
“Better me than them,” he pointed out. “But they won’t. They want me to do something for them. They’re not going to hurt me before I do it, that’d just be dumb.” He turned back to his car.
“No—” But he was already getting in, and Val was starting to cry.
“Hey.” Carlos squatted down and smiled at her. “Hi.” He waved.
She paused, blinking. Then, hesitantly, waved back.
“I’m sleepy,” said Troy, his lower lip pushing out. “I didn’t want to go out.”
“We’ll get you into bed in just a sec,” Carlos said seriously, and then looked up at Pauline. “He’s right, you know. They’re not going to hurt him.”
“They’re just going to make him do something that might hurt him.” Pauline looked out at Drew, who was fighting the car’s recalcitrant starter. “What if I followed him?”
“Pauline, another car would—”