I scoffed. “Sweetie, you took a bullet to the stomach, not a ball to the face.”
“And if you’d just settle down and let it heal, you’d recover quicker,” my mom threw in quickly.
“And if you’d listen to them, they wouldn’t be nagging at you at,” my dad checked his watch, “8:30 in the morning on a Saturday.”
Colin chuckled and my mom held up her hands in surrender. “Point taken.”
I leaned over and kissed Colin on his cheek. “Sorry.”
He rubbed his nose against mine. “It’s okay.”
My dad cleared his throat and I backed away from Colin and stuck out my tongue at my dad and he stuck his back out at me. “Behave yourself. WHICH IS WHAT I EXPECTED FROM YOUR EDUCA--”
“Okay dad!” Colin started laughing and I dropped my jaw. “Stop, you’re making it worse!”
“It should be worse,” my mom sang. “Thank you for participating, Colin.”
Colin nodded with pride. “Of course. This is fun.”
My mom opened her laptop and after tapping away at the keyboard a little bit, she turned the screen to face us, pressed play on a video, and then walked around to stand next to my dad.
A news video started to play that showed Val being walked out of a courthouse in handcuffs. There were crowds of people on both sides screaming at him as he was loaded into a squad car. “The town of Orchard Mesa can sleep a little easier today as former high school science teacher, Val Kepler, is found guilty of all the charges brought against him by the district attorney. The town has been the source of misfortune recently, as a burglary gone wrong resulted in the deaths of Ryan and Helena Undinger.” Simultaneously, my mom and I put our hands on Colin, hers on his back and mine on his arm. “Their son, Colin Undinger would go on to heroically save his girlfriend, Tatiana Marquette, after she was kidnapped by the teacher she was involved in an illicit, sexual relationship with Val Kepler. Kepler was sentenced to 109 years in prison today, with no possibility of parole. His charges included attempted rape, statutory rape, attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, child endangerment, and kidnapping. The judge who oversaw the case, an Orchard Mesa native, had this to say:”
“I was shocked and appalled by the actions of this individual. Remaining impartial was difficult. I wanted to sentence him to a thousand years on the spot, but the evidence was insurmountable, and the jury came to the right decision today.” The judge, an elderly man with a bald head, and a liver-spot stained face, looked directly into the camera. “And the bravery of young Colin Undinger, who only lost his parents a month prior, to race into danger, that’s a man Orchard Mesa can be proud of. Can’t wait to see you back on the field, young man. Go Tigers!”
I rubbed Colin’s hand, and that time when I kissed him on his cheek, my parents remained silent.
My mom looked at her watch and yelped. “Oh. We gotta go kids, we’re late.”
Colin was finally eighteen, and my mom had put off his parents’ lawyer for a while after everything happened with me and Val. He had some decisions to make about everything his parents had left him, but unlike the fearful, uncertain way he approached the subject a few months ago, he walked into the lawyer’s office now with his head held high. He sat down in the leather chair and folded his hands on top of the desk like a proper businessman. I was proud of him, but he also looked sexy in his navy blue suit with his hair slicked back and falling down his neck. I’d be glad when he had fully healed, not just because I didn’t want him to be suffering anymore, but because his injury had effectively brought our barely-started sex life to a screeching halt.
“I gotta say, I was shocked to hear that you picked a college so close,” the lawyer began. “Your parents had been saving for quite some time, expecting you to pick a place further away.”
Colin had been offered full-ride scholarships from several major colleges, including eight of the previous years’ Big Ten. He hadn’t played since he had been shot, but his recent notoriety in the news caused people to look him up and some of his football reels went viral.
Colin glanced over at me, sitting on the couch against the wall as my mom took the other chair. “Yeah. My whole world is here, so…”
The lawyer smiled. “Well, I’m glad to see you doing so much better. I realize this is arduous. It’s never fun for a kid to have to take care of these types of affairs. So, let’s start with--”
“I’m turning over the deed of the house to my aunt. She’s going to maintain it, probably rent it out, until I’m ready to move back into it or sell it. Any money from renting it out will be put into a savings account that she has emergency access to, but otherwise will be used solely to pay the mortgage and other expenses. I’ve already asked the bank to transfer some starting funds to that account to handle the house’s costs until it’s ready to be rented.”
My mom, myself, and the lawyer’s jaws all dropped. He sounded so confident, so official. “W-well, excellent,” the lawyer replied. “And--”
“Sorry to keep cutting you off,” Colin continued. “I’ll be taking over Undinger’s after I graduate college. Until then, Harriet,” Undinger’s long-time manager, “will oversee the business. She’ll still run any major decisions by me, but honestly, I trust her more with the restaurant at this point, so I’ve given her complete control over the restaurant. Even when I take over full time, my hope is to be mostly hands off. Harriet’s much more prepared than I am.”
My mom smiled broadly. “He’s been working hard to put it all together.”
The lawyer laughed. “I see. I guess that just leaves the matter of where you’ll live.”
“I’m going to pick up the keys to an apartment on Clairmont and 8th after this meeting.” Colin’s confident smile grew large on his face. “I’ll be there for the foreseeable future. I used some of the money my parents left me to pay rent a year in advance so I just focus on school and those expenses.”
The lawyer folded her hands, impressed. “It seems like you’ve got everything in order.” She looked over at me. “You’ve got yourself a good one, girl.” She winked.
I nodded. “Trust me, I know.”
The apartment Colin had mentioned, was one we picked out together. My parents tried desperately to get him to stay, but now that he was recovering from losing his parents, he was getting to the point that asking for so much was draining him. He promised to visit frequently, and my mom made him agree to Sunday dinners. In truth, Colin probably would have been happy to continue staying with us, but my parents were too solicitous of him, and I think it made him miss his own parents. He hadn’t said as much, but part of the reason he was moving into his own place was so that he could officially distance himself from things that reminded him of their untimely passing. Being at our place, especially that it had us under the same roof, was a reminder of his circumstances, even if it led to other ones that made him happy.
Less important, though still worth mentioning, was the fact that my dad had behaved exactly as I predicted when we finally told them we were together. If Colin’s door even blew in the wind, my dad was next to him half a second later, grilling him on where he was going. It wasn’t like we could do anything, even if we wanted to, and the structure finally toppled when my dad actually dropped to the ground and checked under the table in the dining room when we were eating dinner one night. Apparently we’d been smiling too much and he thought we were playing footsie.