Tuesday Tales: From the Word HARD

Welcome to 2022. Here’s hoping it’s a good year, better than the last. For the first Tuesday Tales’ post of the year, our word prompt is HARD. I’m continuing with Royal Flush, but to better serve the plot, I’ve switched from first to third person since Kyle deserves a voice of his own and tweaked the story a bit.

“Kyle Stapleton, well, I’ll be,” Randy said. “His mother, Leilani, is still quite the celebrity around here. She was a famous model, apparently from a well-to-do Hawaiian family. She retired from modeling when she married. Gossip said the family wasn’t pleased with her choice, disowned her, or something. Derek was fresh out of the marines—they met in Honolulu. They came back to take over the family farm after his old man died. They’ve lived outside of town for more than forty years. The farm’s made quite a name for itself, too. They had three kids, two boys and a girl. Leila married a doctor and moved out of state. Ben, the youngest son, manages the farm now that Derek passed a few months ago. He and his wife Ingrid don’t have any kids yet. I was surprised when neither Kyle nor his sister came back for the funeral—not that there was much of one considering the pandemic. Leilani took some of Derek’s ashes back to Hawaii, so they may have met up with her there. Kyle’s a big shot lawyer—not sure what kind—but it has something to do with the government. Could be he’s with the IRS. Their fraud division probably has a bunch of lawyers on retainer. Last I heard, he was engaged to marry some debutante.”

Damn! She should’ve known. Lots of men chose not to wear a wedding ring. Thank goodness for the old small town rumor mill. What they didn’t know, they invented. Everyone meant well, and there was no malice intended, but keeping things private was hard to do in Forest Falls. How much of Randy’s story was true? Not that it was really any of her business. She had her secrets, and he was entitled to his, but knowing he was unavailable would prevent her from making a fool of herself.

Pearl shrugged. “Maybe they couldn’t get here. You know, the virus has made traveling difficult, and depending on where they were, flights were hard to get. I’m sure, given how bad the pandemic was then, a doctor would’ve been unable to get away. Kyle said he was back a few weeks to visit family. Other than the fact that he likes the coffee and lemon meringue pie, that’s all I know.”

Randy laughed, something he did rarely these days. “You may be a sight for sore eyes, but you make a lousy detective.” He lifted the cup to his mouth. “By now, Rachel would have all the latest information, including the color of his shorts. My wife missed her calling.”

That’s it. Stay safe and don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales