Page 106 of The Sebastian Guarantee
“To the investors he met with before the event?”
“Something like that,” Erasmus answered.
“And that’s why you’re here? You want me to see Sebastian pitch an idea?” she said a touch more sharply than she’d meant. Maybe there was a disconnect. Perhaps in the helicopter excitement, she’d missed something.
“Yep, that’s why we’re here,” her uncle Rowen confirmed.
What the hell?
“Well, he’s not the only one with a pitch,” she asserted, lifting her chin. “I need to get back to Denver for LETIS Live, too, for my own pitch to the investors.”
“We know,” her uncle answered.
Dammit!She was back to being totally confused. “Uncle Row, what’s going on? How could you know what I’m pitching?”
He held out his phone. He’d pulled up Foot Tap Studio’s webpage. “I know it’s not Munch Match.”
“No, it’s not,” she replied, softening her sharpened demeanor as she stared at the page’s download counter. The open-source software had garnered over one hundred thousand downloads. “I posted the source code. It’s free for anyone to use however they like.” She swallowed past a lump in her throat. “I’m pitching Go Girl. I believe it’s what my mom and dad would want me to do.” Her voice cracked as an overwhelming sensation washed over her. She glanced away and blinked back tears.
“Hey, Tula,” Erasmus said gently and waved his daughter over to the windows. “Let’s see if we can spy our house from up here.”
He was trying to give them a little privacy, and she appreciated it. She wiped her cheek and steadied herself.
Her uncle Rowen glanced at the yearbook on her lap. “Is that what I think it is?”
She opened the book to the page with her mother’s picture and handed it over. “I met the former principal and school secretary from my mom’s high school at a diner. They remembered my mom, and they gave me this.”
Rowen studied the page. “You chose the same quote for your yearbook, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “Crazy, huh?”
Now her uncle was the one with tears welling in his eyes. “I’m sorry I never brought you to Stratlin, Phoebe. Your mother and father were very important to me. I got to know your mom first as Andrew’s girlfriend and then his wife. She didn’t have any living relatives. We were her family. After your parents passed away and you came to live with me, I focused on our life in Denver. But I should have done more. I should have taken you to see where your mom grew up.”
She took his hand in hers. “You don’t have to apologize, Uncle Row. I know with all my heart that today was supposed to be the first time I visited. But I’m still not totally sure what you’re doing here.”
The man’s gaze grew glassy. “I need you to trust me, kid. Can you do that?”
She held the gaze of the man who’d loved her like a father. They’d had one rocky beginning. Barely six years old and a hellion at that, she’d tested his patience and run the poor guy ragged. Then Penny came into their lives, and everything fell into place—and it still did. She adored her aunt and uncle.
She glanced at the picture of her mother. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams,” she said, reading the quote. “You and Aunt Penny always believed in me. My parents trusted you to raise me and love me. I couldn’t ask for more.” She bit back a grin. “So, yeah, I trust you,” she replied, then tapped her foot twice, like she used to do as a kid when she would secretly call him a butthole.
The man shook his head.
She chuckled. “I was a handful, huh?”
“Phoebe, Princess of the Hot Dog Fairies, Bearer of Cookies, and Eater of Pizza, you are still a handful,” he teased, but behind his bifocals, his eyes were as teary as hers.
“I see our house! Phoebe, that’s my house, and that’s the big pasture and our barn for when the donkeys are with us in Denver. But they’re back in Rickety Rock,” Tula called, bobbing back and forth in her hot dog suit.
“Oh, yes, I know your house well,” Phoebe answered.
A ping vibrated through the ritzy cabin.
“Buckle up, please. We’ll be landing shortly,” the pilot announced over the intercom.
Phoebe pressed her hand to the window and focused on the ground. “We’re landing in the Cress’s backyard?”
“And there’s the party bus,” Tula chimed. “Look at the flashing colors.”
