Tainted Gold (Providence Gold 3)

That was the year we hadn’t all gone with them because of a new site being opened in the company, and we’d walked in the next morning to posters of my smiling parents covered head to crotch in body paint, boobs and moobs everywhere. I don’t think any of us had recovered from it. To make it worse, they’d had a copy printed on a massive canvas which was now hanging in the hallway on the top floor of my parent’s house.

“Your family are awesome,” Beau mused, obviously thinking of the photo. It had also featured on the front page of our newspaper here, so few people had missed it, even the ones who didn’t have the internet.

Mental bleach hadn’t been invented, trust me we’d all searched high and low for it, including calling up some laboratories. So, I deflected and asked the question I really wanted the answer to after last night. “You think the same about Rich?”

As in Rich Suave, aka Rico Suave, our right-hand man and one of the weirdest guys I’ve ever met in my life. He was a Gonzales County native but hadn’t gone to the same school as us, so I hadn’t really known the guy until he started working for Townsend Oil. Now he was a part of the family, and I lived to fuck shit up for him. Not nastily, but like accidentally messing up his perfect appearance, kicking up dust as I walked past him, putting a cap on his head to mess his hair up… it was an obsession. He did the same to me, although he swears he doesn’t, but when chocolate pudding ends up splattered across the ass of your jeans when no one else was around at the time? Yeah, didn’t take a genius to figure that one out.

All the humor dropped from her face, and in its place was nothing but ice. “We don’t discuss him.”

Not one thing in her tone, appearance or her words invited me to ask the next question, but I was a glutton for punishment. “Why?”

“Maybe ask him?”

I’d definitely be doing that.

I was a little shit, I really wanted to know, and if I hadn’t seen a flash of hurt, I would have pressed harder for the details, but that hurt was like a smack around the head for me, so I reeled my curiosity in.

“There are more home prediction tests,” I gestured to my phone. “There’s garlic…”

“Pass,” she gagged. “And I know Lily’ll pass, too.”

“A ring on a string being dangled over her belly?”

Both of us looked over at the bedroom door and then back at each other. “She might worry if she wakes up and both of us are standing over her with a ring on a string. Like a voodoo version of Gollum.”

“Fair point,” I hummed and looked back at the screen. “Luna did baking soda in her pee, that’s a lie. Oh, but here’s a Chinese version of the Mayan one.”

Sitting down on the couch, I looked through the instructions and hit the link to take me to where to do the test.

“What do you need?” Beau asked, reading the screen over my shoulder.

“Holy shit, this one is weird,” I muttered. “I’ve got to find out her Chinese age.”

“What the hell is that?”

Hitting the next link, I read the screen and sighed. “Why must everything be so complicated?”

Snatching the phone out of my hand, Beau did something and then looked at me. “There was an easier link. The answer is twenty-three. Now all we have to do is calculate the Chinese month of conception. You’ll have to do that one because it looks like you have to put in the date that y’all did the horizontal hula.”

Like I’d ever forget that one.

“May seventh.”

Putting it in, we waited for the results. “Huh, what was I doing on the seventh? It’s weird to think you guys were bumping uglies, and I was probably washing my hair or something,” she chuckled and then picked up her own phone and opened up the calendar on it. “Oh, shit, no, uh that was a bad day for me.”

If it hadn’t been for how red her face went, I wouldn’t have paid it any more attention, but I just had to. “Why?” And then I felt it pertinent to point out, “And if you say no reason, then be warned I’m just going to keep on asking.”

Glancing quickly at me, she looked the other way. “I had a bikini wax done, and it hurt, so I was up most of the night putting ice packs on it.”

“On what?” I was back to being engrossed in the screen on my phone because we had the results for the Chinese month, and even though I was interested in Beau’s answer, I was about to find out what result the Chinese gave for the gender of my kid.