“She’d try anything, but you’re right,” I say to my mother. “This definitely suits her.”
“It’s fucking late,” Dani says, earning a shh from her honorary third grandma, aka my mother.
Jerry huffs up to join us, Leo dragging behind him. “Did I miss it? We had a potty problem.”
He’s a decent guy. Not my first choice for poker night, but then, I’m not the poker night type, so we get along pretty well.
Hyacinth hits the stage with Begonia, and the adolescents go wild.
“She loves this camp,” Jerry says. “It’s a really good thing you make it pretty clear you can only handle one woman, because Hy would dump me for this camp.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jerry,” my mother says. “Hyacinth would never leave you for this camp or for Hayes. He gives terrible foot rubs. And she’s too busy to fully appreciate camp. Now, once your little ones are old enough to be campers…”
“Crap. I’ve gotta up my game.”
Begonia introduces Hyacinth, and the two of them fall into an old routine that I’ve seen dozens of times, but never the same show twice. It’s stories about their time at camp when they were younger, their favorite skits, their most embarrassing moments, and hints of the trouble they got into that they won’t tell the campers about, in case the campers come back next year.
“Don’t get in trouble,” Begonia says to the four hundred million teens and pre-teens.
Hyacinth winks at them.
The crowd roars with laughter.
“This calls for an interruption if you want this place still standing before the corporate retreats start,” my father murmurs to me.
I rub my thumb over the velvet box in my pocket. “It does, doesn’t it?”
“You sure you want to do this?” Jonas asks.
While I’ve had a fantastic year, he has not.
Turns out, we Rutherfords are better at navigating public scandals than we thought.
Or possibly we’re getting better at letting people see that we’re not perfect, and that’s exactly as it should be.
“I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life,” I tell him. “Here. Hold the little guy.”
He smiles and takes the sleepy bundle. “Good sign.”
I head down the closest stairway, following in Hyacinth’s footsteps to the stage, where Begonia gasps softly. “Well, this is unusual,” she says, meeting me at the edge and holding out a hand to help me up. “Look at this. We get the man responsible for Camp Funshine’s reincarnation himself. Now, go easy on Mr. Rutherford, okay? He doesn’t like big crowds.”
She beams at me, her nose wrinkling a little as if she’s asking what I’m up to, and I give her a peck on the cheek that makes the kids around us erupt in cheers.
“Always wondered if that would happen,” I murmur to her.
“What brings you to the stage?” she whispers back.
“I missed you.”
That smile melts me every time.
“Begonia didn’t introduce Mr. Rutherford here properly,” Hyacinth announces. “He’s actually her b-o-y-f-r-i-e-n-d.”
The kids squeal even louder.
“We know! We saw them k-i-s-s-i-n-g,” one of the teenagers yells.
Hyacinth fake-gasps. “Scandalous!”
“Truly,” I agree.
It’s odd being on a stage, and I still don’t know how Jonas does this—or Begonia, for that matter, as she’s out here for campfire skits at least every other week—but her hand is slipped in mine, and she squeezes lightly while she makes a face at the audience.
“Okay, okay, calm down. Grown-ups are allowed to date. And kiss.”
“And grown-ups also—” someone starts in the audience, but Begonia’s on it.
“Ernie Brown, if you finish that sentence, you don’t get to meet any other special guests tonight.”
Half the kids snicker.
“Now,” she continues, “since our dear Mr. Rutherford has come all the way up to the stage—for the first time all summer, I might add—let’s see what he has to say.” She smiles at me. “And the floor is yours.”
I look out over the mass of bodies in the dark, some illuminated by the fire, some farther back and merely shapes and shadows.
And then I look back at Begonia.
“Actually, I’d prefer to just talk to you.”
My voice carries, and I hear whispers around us.
Begonia’s nose twitches again, and so do her eyebrows. “Right here?”