that you worry that you have enough to give your kids, so they don’t have to struggle so much when they get older,” I replied absently, transfixed by the blue sky and the massive expanse of land.
“Oh? You have kids, Farron?”
The question caught me off guard, and I realised what I had said to her.
Laughing off my mind wondering, I turned back and faced Nixx’s mum giving her my full attention.
Smiling at her, I nodded. “I do, I have a son. Dillion is fourteen, right now he is at a mate’s place riding dirt bikes, or so he told me when I rang him earlier.” A tingle of pride spread through me, thinking and talking about my boy. He was the joy of my life, a gentle boy but a boy through and through. He never missed an opportunity to get in a paddock and ride a dirt bike. As we lived behind the restaurant in a three bedroom house, he relished getting together with his mates to let loose. This house was different to the one Alec bought us, that had been huge where this one was small and a hodgepodge of walls and areas that made no sense, but it was mine and Dillion’s. I added my own taste with some clever decorating, but more importantly my son had a say in his room. The walls were covered with posters of football teams and motorbikes, a real teenagers room. Something his father would never have allowed.
“Fourteen! My god girl, how old were you when you had him?”
“Um, I was twenty. Why?” I asked, confused by her question and her tone of incredulity.
“Because my dear, you look nowhere near old enough to have a fourteen-year-old. Your skin is sublime, not a wrinkle or crow’s feet to be seen,” Mrs Hott complimented, giving me another round of red flushes.
“Oh … thanks?”
“Fenixx didn’t tell me you had a son, I wonder why?” she mused, confusing me more.
“Um, why would Nixx know? I barely know him.”
Mrs Hott tilted her head, and for the first time, I noted that the triplets got their blues from their mum.
“My dear, he goes into your restaurant every night for dinner, has done for the last year that I know of at least.”
“Yeah, he does, but he never talks to me,” I responded quickly, “just eats, leaves a ridiculous tip, then leaves.”
When my waitress told me that someone left a hundred dollar tip in the jar on the counter, I worried that someone drank too much and confused the hundred dollar note for a smaller one. Taking it, I tucked it away in the office safe and decided to try and find out who did it so I could give it back, convinced it had been a mistake.
However, when it happened the next night and the next and then every night for a week after that, I got suss. Finally, when I had ten of the distinctive green notes in my safe, I concluded that it was a deliberate act. So then one night, I set Dillion up at the front table closest to the counter and pulled my own version of a sting.
I found out that it was Fenixx Hott behind the extravagant gesture, and he meant to give that much. Ordinarily, the tip jar was for the wait staff, rewarding them for a good job by the customers. But Nixx didn’t interact more than order his meal; he didn’t ask for extra food or beverages, didn’t spill anything or make demands. He just sat, ate and stared.
So, I put them away in the small lockbox and stashed them in the safe that had been a year ago, and I was still doing it to this day. Last night being the first time he had missed and that was only because of his brother’s wedding.
I don’t know why Nixx tipped so much, but for some odd reason, I didn’t want to give the money to anyone. Call it selfish or maybe even wishful thinking, but I secretly liked to believe he was leaving the generous amount for me. Not that I had any intention to spend any of the cash. Sitting in my safe was roughly thirty-seven thousand dollars, a fortune that was going to go back to its rightful owner.
“Oh, trust me Farron, Fenixx knows you have a son. There is no doubt in my mind about that,” Mrs Hott announced, her head bobbing up and down, “nothing gets passed that one.”
The conversation was going