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Hearing Ethan ask about his daughter, Frank shot him a sideways look.
"It's because of you, mostly."
Hearing the blame land on him, Ethan protested.
"I haven't seen Chloe in nearly half a year. Don't pin every household mood on me."
Frank set down the last of the plates and wiped his hands, regarding Ethan with mild irritation.
"My girl used to give you a hard time constantly. You remember. And now you've gone and become, well, whatever it is you've become. So now she feels awkward around you. That's all it is. She's embarrassed."
Ethan was caught off guard for a moment, and then it clicked.
His relationship with Frank and Linda would never shift because of anything happening outside. They were bedrock. But the attitudes of more distant friends and relatives were always going to be affected by his sudden change in standing. Of course Chloe felt strange. She'd spent her childhood treating him like an irritating fixture of the household, and now that fixture was on the national news.
"Uncle Frank, tell Chloe there's no need for any of that. The old friction between us, I wasn't blameless either. Whatever the reasons, the fact is I turned her life upside down by being here. If anyone owes anyone an apology, I owe my little sister one."
A flicker of relief crossed Frank's eyes.
Both Ethan and Chloe were irreplaceable parts of his life. At his age, status and reputation had stopped mattering. What mattered was that the household stayed whole and at peace. His quiet fear, before tonight, had been that Ethan might not have forgiven Chloe for the way she'd treated him as a child. Even with reasons behind it, the girl's words back then had genuinely cut deep.
It seemed he had worried over nothing.
In truth, Ethan had never really held Chloe's childhood barbs against her. She'd been a kid who hadn't learned to guard her tongue, lashing out at a situation she didn't choose. That was ordinary. And beyond that, he had no desire whatsoever to cause grief to the two people who had taken him in and treated him as their own.
"While we're on the subject," Frank said. "What's the story with this Yvette Caldwell? You're an adult now, fine, but a thing as big as seeing someone, you can at least mention it to me and your aunt."
Hearing the gentle reproach, Ethan looked awkward.
"Where is your head at? Your nephew is up to his neck in work right now. I don't have the spare hours to be dating anyone."
Seeing Frank's frank skepticism, Ethan offered a direct guarantee that there was nothing going on.
Though as for Yvette down the line, that's harder to say.
That part, Ethan added only inside his own head.
Frank studied him and, with reservations, more or less accepted the denial.
"I'm not some fossil from another century. If you want to date, I won't stand in your way. But at least let me look the person over for you first. And if it comes to it, I know a few good families. It's safer when you understand someone's background..."
Before Frank could finish, Linda materialized in the kitchen doorway as if from nowhere.
Her right hand found a discreet pinch of skin at Frank's waist and twisted.
The sharp pain shut Frank's mouth on the spot.
Watching the two of them start in on each other, Ethan shook his head, wiped his hands, and removed himself from the kitchen.
The instant Ethan had cleared the doorway into the living room, Frank's eyes went wide as a bull's.
"What was the pinch for?"
Linda glared, giving no ground.
"You blockhead. Who told you to go offering to set Ethan up with some other girl?"
Frank looked genuinely bewildered. He turned it over in his mind and could not, for the life of him, see what he'd said wrong.
Seeing her husband's confusion, Linda sighed. There was a reason Frank had never climbed any higher than he had in his career.
"Let me ask you something. Do you think our daughter and Ethan would make a good match?"
Put that plainly, even Frank's slow gears finally caught.
"You want to set the boy up with our daughter?"
"Keep your voice down!"
Linda swatted him and shot a glance toward the living room, exhaling only after confirming Ethan hadn't heard.
"Hold on. Would that even work?"
Hearing the doubt, Linda gave him a withering look.
"Drop the 'would it.' Our daughter has the looks and the bearing. Why on earth wouldn't it work?"
Frank's face stayed troubled.
"That's not what I mean. You know how famous Ethan is now. Worldwide. If he wanted to, what kind of woman couldn't he have? Next to that, what advantage does our girl have, honestly?"
Linda very nearly kicked the blockhead standing in front of her.
There was a point Frank was failing to grasp, and it was the whole point. The two of them shared no blood. Ethan had come into their home as a boy with nowhere else to go, after losing his own parents, and they had raised him under the same roof as their daughter, but he was not a Holloway by blood and never had been. There was no obstacle in it at all. Which was exactly why the scheme could work.
"He still has us," Linda said. "That's his advantage and ours. We're the ones in his ear, day in and day out. We nudge a little here, a little there, and over time the two of them start looking at each other differently. That's how these things happen."
"But..."
"No 'but.'"
Seeing Frank still hesitating, Linda cut him off.
"Frank. Don't you want the boy to become real, proper family? You raised him like a son, and at the end of the day he still calls you 'Uncle.' If those two get together, he'll have to change what he calls you. He'll have to call you 'Dad.'"
That did it. Frank straightened as though someone had jolted him awake.
"I'm in. Just tell me what to do, General."
Linda nodded, satisfied. She gave Frank a short string of instructions, sliced a plate of fruit, and carried it out of the kitchen.
In the living room, the sight of Ethan sprawled boneless across the sofa, poured into the cushions like a man who'd never had a vertebra in his life, sent a fresh surge of irritation through Linda. She set the fruit plate down on the coffee table with a sharp clack and delivered a kick to Ethan's backside.
"Are you trying to put me in an early grave? So young, and you can't sit up like a person."
Thick-skinned as ever, Ethan didn't feel the kick at all. But he sat up at the scolding and popped a strawberry into his mouth.
He'd assumed, given Linda's temper, that she'd snap at him a few more times for good measure. Instead, out of character, she sat down at the far end of the sofa and turned on the television without another word. Sensing something off, Ethan leaned his face in closer.
"What is it, Aunt Linda? Something bothering you? Tell me. Your nephew guarantees he'll handle it."
Linda didn't answer. She let out a single snort through her nose, but the disdain packed into it was eloquent enough on its own.
Ethan's mouth nearly twisted. She was looking down on him?
With his current standing, the entire world might be a stretch, but inside the borders of the Republic there were not many problems he couldn't smooth over.
Linda, declining to take his bait, spoke as though to herself.
"Ethan. You ought to spend more time with your sister when you've got a free moment. Before, when your business blew up the way it did, Chloe's whole life got dragged through it too. Reporters, people from the gossip sites, all of them constantly turning up where she was. Your uncle and I had no choice in the end but to transfer her to a different school. The girl doesn't have a single friend anymore."
Ethan, who'd been grinning a moment earlier, fell silent.
It would have been a lie to say he felt no guilt. Chloe had suffered a great deal, and the cause of it was him.
"Don't worry, Aunt Linda. If there's anything I can do, I won't turn it down."