Page 35 of Home for Nathan
There, Nathan’s dad nodded. “Yes from the hotel. Antonia. I’m a huge fan.”
Okay, that was adorable. “I will make sure that you get to meet him. He’s a very nice guy.”
“Oh, I’d love that. I’ve always painted myself a bit of an amateur ghost enthusiast, and to meet an honest-to-God ghost hunter in the flesh… Well, that would be like heaven on earth.”
Nathan’s mom rolled her eyes. “Oh, Lord. He’ll have his phone out, wandering around the house with his EVP reader app open.”
“Don’t tell Zion if you get something,” Nathan teased. “It will freak him out.”
“Hey, I’ve really come around to the idea.”
Nathan chuckled, grabbing his hand once they were settled in on the couch. “That’s because our ghost is benevolent.”
“She does seem to be.”
“She?” Marcus raised an eyebrow.
“We assume so. Let me show you the stuff I found under the floorboards. Well, Hank has the stuff, but I took pictures, and he’s sent copies back of a lot of it.”
Zion pulled out his phone, and soon he and Marcus were engrossed in discussing the letter opener, and why the blueprints were hidden in the floorboards and more.
“Hank says he’s doing a deep dive on the previous owners of the house, but Nathan thinks she might have been the original matriarch of the family. Or one of the daughters who stayed on here?”
Marcus glanced at his son. “Really?”
“Just a feeling, Dad. You know how it is.”
“I do?—”
“Now, boys,” Angela, Nathan’s mom, murmured. “We need to talk logistics for tomorrow. Marcus is making the pies. Kelly and I have the turkey.”
To be honest, his parents looked pretty relieved at the change in subject. They weren’t much on ghost stories, which Zion understood. He hadn’t been into them only months ago before he moved to Secret Springs.
They got to talking about turkeys and pies and whose dressing was going be better—his mom’s or Angela’s—and they agreed to split it up. They decided on something he wasn’t even sure of because he and Nathan were laughing together with Torah, dancing around asking for treats, and it was just all of a sudden not awkward.
It was never a given that two people’s families were going like each other when their kids got into a relationship. Zion was pretty relieved.
Zion held out his hand for Nathan to take it, and they shared a grin along with a wink. It didn’t really matter who made the dressing. What mattered was that they were all going to be together for the holiday.
Nathan was pretty tired by the time they had achieved turkey and dressing and all the good things including Nathan’s mom’s cranberry sauce. Which, oh my God, delicious. He didn’t know that the stuff didn’t come out of a can in a gelatinous tube. Wow, so good. Apparently, she used orange juice in it, and she was going to give him the recipe.
He sat and took a load off his feet while Zion and his dad discussed which football game to watch on TV. They had all watched the parade together, which had seemed amazing and special, and he was just trying not to cry all day long. Honestly, six months ago, when he’d contemplated Thanksgiving, he’d thought about how he was going to be spending a very lonely day in his apartment with one of those little turkey dinners that the Sundrop put together for people so they could just stick them in their microwave or their oven.
His dad came and sat across from him in one of the parlor chairs that wasn’t a big recliner. “How are you doing, son?”
Tears stung his eyes again, and he shook them off. God, he was an emotional wreck. “I’m doing great, Dad. I really am. I’m so baffled at how all this happened, but I’m so excited because I really think that Zion and I have something special…” He trailedoff for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. “Maybe he’s too good to be true, but it doesn’t feel like it.”
“I’m glad. I can tell that you two are really… What do they call it now? Vibing?”
“Oh, very nice, Dad. I have no idea if that’s correct slang. You know, I’m mostly millennial, and they say my slang is out of style now.”
His dad chuckled. “Yeah, well, at least you don’t saycoolfor everything, apparently.”
He just nodded. His dad was such a hoot. “How are you and Mom doing?”
“Good. We’re good. Your mom’s really excited about getting her second master’s degree.”
“I know! I couldn’t believe when she told me about it. Actually, what I couldn’t believe is that you didn’t tell me about it before now.” His folks were just getting shit done.
