according to Tyson. But Gia didn’t know anything about Derek Camden beyond that, and she reasoned that if he’d married and settled down he might be more trustworthy in the Bronsons’ eyes.
But the question that shouldn’t have been difficult to answer instead seemed to puzzle him.
“Huh...” he said, rubbing the back of his neck and suddenly making a face that conveyed discomfort and confusion. “I was going to jump in and say no, never married. But then I remembered that that isn’t exactly true anymore. Is annulled a marital status?”
“Annulled... I don’t know, I’ve never met anyone who was annulled.”
“Yeah, me, neither...” he said with a frown.
Their desserts arrived and when the shop owner left them to eat he didn’t explain further, leaving Gia curious but not feeling free to ask more than she already had.
Then he changed the subject and she really couldn’t indulge her curiosity.
“So did you talk to the Bronsons about accepting some help from us?”
“I did.”
He smiled at her tone. “It didn’t go well?”
“It went the way I thought it would. But they did come around. They said they would let you help me help them.”
He nodded slowly as he ate a bite of his pie. “Okay. A little convoluted but still something. And I’ll take what I can get at this point. So what do you have planned?”
Gia had taken a bite of her own dessert as he said that. And when it came to chocolate, there was no rushing her. So she held up a finger in front of her mouth to signify a pause as she savored the warm, rich, dark chocolate of her lava cake.
He smiled. “No hurry, enjoy yourself.”
“The lemon pie is good, but next time try one of these,” she advised when her mouth wasn’t full. “It’s just the right blend of chocolates and just melty enough and just...amazing.”
His smile stretched into a grin. “Not a big chocolate guy so I’ll take your word for it.”
If anything could turn her off, it should be that!
But somehow it didn’t make him look any less appealing to her, so she just filed the information away and answered his inquiry into what she had planned to help the Bronsons.
“There’s a day of yard work and a day of home repairs to get their place in better shape,” she said. “And I’m cleaning out their stuff and collecting things to sell at a yard sale that I’m hoping will also raise some money—if you want to bring anything for that, do it. This coming Saturday is the yard work, the Saturday after that will be the home repair day and the Saturday after that is the yard sale.”
“So yard work and home repairs—they haven’t been able to keep their place up,” he deduced.
“They haven’t had the money, and they’re just getting too old to do most things—”
“Should they be moved into a retirement home or assisted living?”
It was a perfectly reasonably suggestion, one she and Tyson had swatted back and forth, one she’d thrown out to the Bronsons.
And yet hearing it from Derek Camden made her recall Larry and Marion’s concern that the Camdens were after their house.
Which still didn’t seem at all likely to Gia.
But even though there wasn’t anything intimidating about Derek Camden—in fact, he seemed down-to-earth, open and friendly—she’d also heard so much from the Bronsons about the evil Camdens that she felt some concern herself.
“Retirement homes and assisted living are expensive, too, and the Bronsons are really against going somewhere with old people—”
He laughed again. “They’re how old themselves?”
“Eighty-nine and eighty-seven,” Gia said with a hint of humor at the irony of that. “But staying together in their house is a big deal to them.”
“Okay. So beyond their home needing some work inside and out, what else is going on with them?”
He’d said the night before that he wanted to get the full picture, not to merely give money but to make sure the Bronsons had what they needed all the way around. So logically, what he was asking was just a way to get that full picture.
But still, Gia was a little uncomfortable giving this man too many details that would let him know exactly how vulnerable the couple was.
“A lot of things are going on with them,” she said ambiguously, opting only to give him an overview. “They live on a very limited budget. Costs for everything are always rising. They aren’t in bad health for their ages but there are some issues—they both have high blood pressure and some heart things, some arthritis, Marion has osteoporosis. And every time they go to a doctor there’s another medication added—”
“Not your herbal supplements and medicines?”
“I can’t really recommend any of those because they take so many prescription meds I’m afraid of interfering with something or giving them a supplement that reacts badly with a prescription drug—so no. But I help them pay their bills and balance their checkbook—because they both have trouble holding a pen and seeing small print—and there are months when I can’t believe the cost of their prescriptions.”
“Do they need better insurance? A cheaper place to get their prescriptions filled?”
“I’ve looked into both of those things and done the best I can for them, but the bottom line is that some things fall outside of their coverage and there’s nothing that can be done about it.”
“Except to get them more money to pay the expenses they have.”
Gia conceded with a shrug and hoped she hadn’t said too much.
“So where do I start to help you help them?” he asked as he finished his pie.
Gia couldn’t risk telling him too much about the Bronsons’ predicament until she was sure his motives really were pure. But the only way she could think to get a better feel for him was to get to know him a little and see if he seemed trustworthy. And she didn’t know how else to do that except to enlist him in the manual-labor portions of what was going on and spend some time with him. Talking to him. Watching him.
Even if it meant tempting Larry to turn the hose on him or Marion to lace lemonade with laxatives....
So, in response to his query about where he should start to help, she said, “Like I said, Saturday we’re starting with the yard and we can always use two more hands....”
“Okay,” he said without skipping a beat. “Are the Bronsons going to throw rocks at me if I show up on their doorstep, though?”
Maybe he was psychic....
“I hope not,” was the best Gia could promise. “Their bark tends to be worse than their bite—”
“At eighty-seven and eighty-nine their teeth probably aren’t their own.”
“Every one of Marion’s is and she’s very proud of them,” Gia corrected his joke. “But I’ll run with the you-helping-me-to-help-them angle and I think you’ll be safe.” She didn’t add that the Bronsons liked the idea of a Camden working for them, so they were apt to gloat about it—whether to his face or not she couldn’t be sure.
“Then just tell me when and where to show up and I’ll be there,” he said.
Gia gave him the details and finished her lava cake. There didn’t seem to be any more to discuss at this juncture, so she offered to pay for her own dessert as a signal that the meeting had come to a conclusion.
“It’s going on the tab,” he reminded her, refusing