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Amelia was having an early lunch break with her girlfriend. It was a strategical move from their part. Have lunch when everyone else was on the rides, and enjoy the rides while they were busy looking for empty seats in the food court. She was about to take a second bite of her burger when she saw a large group of people come in. They were captivating, at least some of them had to be models. The two eight-seater tables next to her were brought together, and they all sat down. They either had the same idea as her and her girlfriend, or the kids were getting tired.
“Don’t look, but…”
Amelia had to cut her sentence short and frantically make a grab at her girlfriend to bodily stop her from turning around. “What did I just say?” she hissed incredulously. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m sorryyy.” Katie whispered back. “What were you saying?”
“A group of unfairly attractive people just came in. Your 3 o’clock approximately. It’s like they could be celebrities or something.” She flapped her arms for emphasis.
Katie pretended to rummage through her backpack as she sneaked a peek at the people seated close by. As soon as she saw them, her eyes widened. Then she was leaning across the table, getting close to Amelia to make sure she couldn’t be overheard.
“Oh my, you’re right! That’s way too many hot people in one room. How is this happening!?” She too, started to flap her arms from the excitement.
They both continued eating, trying to act nonchalant and failing miserably, as they couldn’t keep themselves from staring at them. Their tables were close enough that they could hear a good majority of their conversation too.
“They’re British, I think. They have accents, Kat. Accents!” Amelia smacked Katie’s arm.
“Yes baby, I know you like accents. You’ve been telling me since the day we met,” Katie’s affectionate smile made her sound less exasperated than she intended to.
Katie took notice of the two seats that didn’t have a person in it but wasn’t empty in the slightest. She tapped her girlfriend on the forearm to say, “Look at all those souvenir bags. That one bag looks like it’s bigger than the kids! Honestly, things in theme parks are way overpriced. I wonder how much they paid for all of those.”
“Wow they must be a wealthy family on vacation. Look at them, can you honestly say that they don’t look rich as fuck?” said Amelia.
“I mean yeah, some of them look boujee as hell. It’s like they have some kind of aura. Rich people aura, if that’s even a thing.” Katie shrugged.
Amelia nodded. “I don’t know if there’s such a thing called rich people aura, but I get your drift either way. The blonde woman, the one with straight hair, she looks like she goes to the salon weekly. Also, I’ve heard someone say that the people who are actually rich, don’t wear things with logos on them.
“Yeah, I don’t see any Louis Vuitton bag or Gucci belt, so that checks out.” Katie seems to be giving up the pretense of normalcy, as she craned her neck to look at everyone’s attire.
Even when they couldn’t observe them as closely as they would’ve like to, it became glaringly obvious that one of the men was extremely uncomfortable with almost everyone else. He was only interacting with two of the kids and even that was stilted at best. The rest of the time he spent sending wary glances or straight up glares at the adult members. It was so painful that Amelia and Katie were feeling the second-handed awkwardness.
But that got Amelia thinking. “I wonder who’s who,” she said, distractedly.
“What do you mean?” Katie cocked her head.
“I mean, who’s friends with who, who’s dating who, who’s related to who, you know, that sort of thing.”
“Ohhhh. Well two of the girls are twins, obviously. Their hair colors are different, but they look the same age and they’re wearing the same dress in different colors. I don’t know about the other girl. She looks older than the twins, but I don’t want to say she’s the older sister just because they’re all sitting together. Her coloring is pretty different.”
“Very true. Alright, time to be Sherlock and Watson.” Amelia giggled and winked conspiratorially.
“Which one am I?” Katie grinned indulgently.
“You know you’re Sherlock, babe.” Amelia tapped Katie on the tip of her nose.
“Fine. Do you have a hypothesis then, my faithful assistant?” Katie rested her chin on her intertwined hands.
“I don’t have one yet, silly. We have to take a look at the clues first.” She stroked her chin theatrically. Or she tried to at least, until she couldn’t take herself seriously anymore and let out a snicker. “So there’s a black girl and a black guy. The rest of them look white, but I don’t know so I’ll say light-skinned for now. Three little girls, two of them are twins. Five women and four men. The women are all blonde except for the two brunettes, and the men have darker hair except for that one guy who has blond hair.”
Katie hummed. “Well, the two people sitting at the corner are obviously a couple. They only have eyes for each other.”
There was a pretty brunette girl cuddled up against one of the men with dark hair. He was sitting down, but it looked like he would be about 6 feet tall if he was standing up. They were indeed talking as if they were in their own little world. On occasion, they would join in on the main conversation, but otherwise seemed content with just each other for company.
“Do you think they’re a new couple? Maybe they’re in their honeymoon phase. We were like that in the beginning, weren’t we?” Katie cooed.
“It’s either that or they’re that estranged sibling and their significant other,” Amelia snorted.
“Well he has to be related to that guy. They look way too similar for them not to be siblings,” Katie pointed with her left hand and covered it with her right. “So estranged brother doesn’t sound that far-fetched.”
“The one in the suit? Yeah, he must be the older brother. What’s up with the suit though? Who even wears a suit to a fucking theme park anyways?” Amelia wrinkled her nose.
“He’s probably so rich that he only owns suits or something. I don’t know what rich people are like, but I don’t think theme parks are his thing. He probably only came because the kids wanted to.” Though Katie still agreed that it was weirdly comical.
The man in question leaned in to whisper into the ear of the woman next to him, who whispered back, smiling the whole time. This was the only other woman in the group with darker hair. She was wearing an army green short sleeved cable knit sweater with black jeans. Stylish, yet practical: perfect for the occasion unlike her partner.
“Oh, did you hear that? The redheaded girl just called her mom. That means the dad is the guy sitting next to her, right? Aww they’re such a cute family. God that little girl has amazing genes with parents like hers.” Katie sighed dreamily. She was debating whether Mr. Suit was a lawyer or a real estate agent, when Amelia snapped her fingers in her face, jerking her out of her imagination.
“What?” Katie said, eyes wide.
Amelia’s reply was unnecessarily cryptic. “He’s on the move,” she said, pointing to the entrance/exit of the food court.
Katie turned around to see what she was talking about, and the man in the suit was just walking out the door. “Where’s he going?” she asked, regretting not paying closer attention to the family.
“I don’t know, but he just took all of the bags and left.” Amelia furrowed her brows. “Nobody made a fuss about it, so I think he’s just going to put them in the car or something.”
“Oh, thank god,” Katie sighed. “So I didn’t miss anything too important?”
“Nah, I don’t think so. Well, actually, they were talking about a quarter, and factions? But I didn’t really understand what the conversation was about. I’m missing some serious context clues here. Although, I did hear them say New Orleans at some point. Could be that they went there for their previous vacation. Or maybe it was related to someone’s work.”
“Okay, new clue: at least one of them has been to New Orleans for unknown reasons.”
Amelia grimaced. “When you put it like that, it’s basically nothing.”
“We still have plenty of time for sleuthing. I doubt they’ll be leaving anytime soon. They haven’t even gotten their food yet,” Katie said, putting her hand on Amelia’s.
“They’re calling your number, sister,” the blond man with dimples was saying, when they tuned into their conversation again.
“Why do I have to be the one to go get it? You don’t look busy either.” The woman with the longest blonde hair pouted.
“Rebekah don’t make a scene, love,” he replied. He didn’t visibly roll his eyes at her, but his tone clearly spoke for itself.
“We’re wasting time. I’ll go get them,” said another blonde woman, so obviously done with their antics. The woman with curly hair who was sitting next to her got up to follow her. Presumably to help with the load, because surely they ordered a huge amount of food with a group so large.
“Yes, thank you dear sister.” The man gave a significant look to his other sister. For there was no doubt of their relation to each other.
Apparently, that was too much for Rebekah, as she stood up with a hefty sigh and went to help her sister. She still managed to pin her brother with a scathing look as she walked away.
“Those three have got to be sibling,” Katie said, getting an instant nod of agreement from Amelia. “Which do you think is older, the man, or the sister that went to get the food?”
“The woman. A hundred percent.” Amelia didn’t even hesitate for a second. “She just saw her two younger siblings about to start fighting and ended it preemptively.”
However, Katie seemed doubtful. “But that makes the guy the middle child because we both know the girl named Rebekah is the youngest. He does not act like a middle child. Especially not one who’s sandwiched by two sisters.”
“You may have a point there,” Amelia conceded. “I don’t want to rely on stereotypes, but I would not have pegged him as a middle child. He seems... I guess not enough of a pushover?” she said, scrunching up her nose.
When the three women came back, their arms were full of trays. The younger sister slammed one of the trays in front of her brother. “Nik, be a dear and grab the drinks, will you? Our hands were too full, and we had to leave them behind,” she said, looking entirely too smug.
Neither of them could hear the next part of the conversation as their fight was all mumbled. They were most likely making sure that the kids didn’t hear them insulting each other, as that was surely what they were doing judging from their sour facial expressions. After some back and forth, the red headed girl spoke up to say, “It’s okay Dad. I can go get them. You can take a break too, Auntie Bex.” At that, Nik shot up, looking absolutely horrified. He hurried to the counter as if he was being chased, but not before giving the girl a hasty kiss on the head.
Amelia and Katie looked at each other. Apparently, they were wrong in their speculation because Nik was her dad. But then what about the other guy?
“Maybe her parents had like an amicable divorce?” Amelia said, lowly. When Katie only gave her an inquisitory look, she elaborated. “Her mom’s obviously with Mr. Suit now. Nik is sitting next to another blonde woman, and he doesn’t treat her like any of the other ladies, so I assume they’re together too. I’m thinking her and the Nik guy separated after having the girl.”
“Mmm, good thinking. Her parents also aren’t actively fighting since they both came on this trip and they’re not glaring at each other.”
“That’s actually pretty damn cool though, isn’t it? Such a mature way of handling it. I’m sure it’s good for their daughter too.”
Whilst they were discussing what kind of co-parenting they must be doing, the man in the suit had come back. They took their eyes off the group for a second, when they were having a rather enthusiastic conversation about what their daughter's holiday schedule must look like. That was all it took apparently, for one moment his seat was still empty, and the next he was sitting as if he was never gone.
“D, are you going to come back and visit soon, or what? I know you still text and facetime, and I get to see you during the Mikaelson gatherings, but Josh misses you.”
“You know the estranged couple in the corner? The black guy sitting next to the girlfriend talks to her more often than the others.”
“Yeah, he calls her ‘D’.”
“So, her name probably starts with a D. What are some names for girls that start with D?”
“Uhh, Diana, Daisy, Danielle, Daphne…” Amelia puts a finger up for each name.
“She doesn’t look like a Daphne to me,” Katie interjects.
“Then what about Delaney? Or Dolly?”
“Definitely not Dolly.” Katie shakes her head and winces.
Amelia defends her option. “Okay but what if she makes everyone call her D because she has an ill-fitting name like Dolly and doesn’t like it?”
“Alright, we’re sticking with D,” Katie ended the debate.
“Speaking of the black guy, what’s his connection to the group though? He’s friends with D at least. It also feels like he’s looking after her so childhood friends or maybe adopted siblings?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t think that’s going to land him an invitation to a family vacation. Like why would they invite a friend of the girlfriend of an estranged brother? He’s also way too comfortable with everyone here.”
“You’re totally right. We’ll look at the other person who’s next to him, which is Rebekah. What do we think of them?” Amelia rested her chin on her intertwined hands.
“Those two have some tension. Not sure what kind though, because at first it looked like sexual tension, but maybe it’s not. A little bit back they were bickering and then something she said really hit him hard. He laughed it off, but I could tell he was actually hurt.”
“Oh, they’re probably freshly divorced. Don’t know why, because they clearly want each other back. But they’re both trying to hide it by being passive aggressive with each other.”
“Or they’re an on-again, off-again couple, who just broke up for the last time, even though everyone knows it won’t stick,” Katie suggests.
Amelia shrugged. “Hmm, maybe. I guess that could work too.”
Their attention was brought back to the group again when they heard a higher voice of one of the little girls.
“Did you ask them if you can stay longer next time?” the older girl said to the twins.
“Please, Daddy? Hope says we should stay because of the… the…” the blonde twin trails off.
“The Mardi Gras carnival,” the other twin finishes for her.
“I don’t know about that, girls.” They could both hear it in his voice that their father didn’t want that happening.
“We would love to have the girls stay,” Rebekah said with a voice too sweet to be polite. “We do have room after all, and dear Hope always enjoys having people closer to her age.”
“Rest assured, Mr. Saltzman. They would be perfectly safe under our protection,” the man in the suit added.
The father finally gave in, but his thanks were forced out with a grimace and his fists were clenched tightly under the table.
“Do you want to know what I think is weird? The fact that the accents don’t match.” Amelia says.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean only three of them sound British. I was too freaked out to notice earlier, but most of them are probably American from the sound of it.”
“Now that you mention it, that is weird, isn’t it? Because the three Brits are Nik, his sister Rebekah, and the estranged brother. Typically, siblings are supposed to have similar accents, aren’t they? But the older sister and Mr. Suit don’t sound British. Did they not grow up together?”
“The estranged brother is easier to explain. He probably was born in the States and moved away. Maybe he studied abroad for college, or maybe his parents sent him to some boarding school.”
Katie wasn’t fully on board with the idea, but accepted it nonetheless. “I don’t know why they wouldn’t have sent the older brother to study abroad too, but whatever.”
“Duh,” Amelia rolled her eyes. “Because Mr. Suit had to be trained to take over the family business. At least follow in his father’s footsteps or something like that. The second born can do whatever he wants. He can fuck off to the UK if he so chooses.”
That seemed to have convinced Katie. “Ohhh, that makes a lot of sense, actually.”
“I don’t have nearly as good of an explanation for the blonde siblings, though,” Amelia grumbled. “The best I got is that they’re Americans who moved to the UK. The younger two picked up on the British accent, but the oldest and their parents were already too used to their original accent.”
“That’s not bad at all. I had a friend in college who was from Canada, and he never lost his accent in the four years he was there.”
“Then I feel more confident saying that they’ve lived in different countries, at least for some time in their life. What if their parents are divorced, and the parents split custody in a dickish way? One parent got the oldest and the other got the younger two.” Amelia paused. “Or they actually have different parents. Maybe the younger two are from a second marriage or something.”
“You know, I don’t know if you’ve realized, but you have this concerning tendency to categorize every broken-up couple as divorced.” Katie said, cautiously.
“Just say you think I’m projecting,” Amelia rolled her eyes. “I know I am, okay? It really fucked up my childhood but I’m working on it, aren’t I?”
Katie smiled at her girlfriend and took her hands. “I know you are, and I couldn’t be prouder.” She brought their joint hands up to her mouth to kiss Amelia’s knuckles.
“Okay, I know I just said that I assume people are divorced because of my trauma. But what about that guy, do you think he also divorced someone here? Because he’s sitting next to his twin daughters, only talking to them, and one of the empty seats is on his other side. It’s like he doesn’t want to sit next to any of them. If anyone is a divorcee here, it’s him.” Amelia said.
“You make some solid points,” Katie agreed with her.
“It must’ve been a pretty messy divorce too, because he cannot stand any of them. I’m surprised he’s even here to be honest, with the amount of hostile energy he’s exuding.” Amelia stared at him intently.
Katie hummed. “What if he’s fighting for custody, and is trying to form a bond with his daughters? Like making sure his daughters like him enough to want him around.”
“I like that, it seems plausible. I accept that theory as fact until proven otherwise. Now the fun part, who’s his ex-wife?” Amelia rested her chin on her right hand.
“Well, if he hates her that much, they would be placed far away, right?”
“I’m going to eliminate D from the running because she seems a bit too young for him. Plus, if we’re sticking to the storyline of her being the girlfriend of an estranged brother, it wouldn’t make much sense for her to be the mother of the twins.”
“By that logic, Nik’s new girlfriend is also out. She looks a little more maternal I guess, but maybe that’s just her step-mother thing with the redhead girl,” said Katie.
“Well I guess the choices are mostly between the two blonde sisters then, because I don’t think the brunette girl birthed all of the kids. Which one do you think it is?”
“The older sister. Just because all of them still look pretty young. The dude looks like he’d be the oldest here,” Katie speculated.
“So he’s a real life version of Ross?” Amelia said with a snort.
Katie giggled. “I guess he is.”
By this point, both of them were done with their burgers, but they couldn’t possibly leave just yet. Not when there was something way more fun happening here. The rides could wait.
It seems Nik was currently in the middle of a rant. “Of course, we wouldn’t have been in that situation if it weren’t for the pesky …”
“Brother, please. This is neither the time nor the place for this discussion,” an exasperated voice said.
“What kind of person says brother like that anymore? Do they think they’re in the Middle Ages or something?” said a bemused Katie.
“Wha— that’s what you focus on? When our whole setting is imploding in front of our eyes?” Amelia’s eyes looked about ready to burst out.
Katie still hadn’t gotten it yet, as she wracked her brain for what exactly was freaking Amelia out. Amelia however, didn’t let her arrive to her own conclusions as she lost the battle with her impatience.
“Mr. Suit called Nik his brother. Not the guy we already knew was his brother, it was Nik!”
“It was!?” Katie was finally on the same boat now. “But then what about everyone else? We thought it was two separate sibling groups. Does that mean all five of them are related?”
“I’d assume so. It’s not like siblings can’t have different hair colors.” Amelia grouched, kicking herself internally for guessing wrong on such a crucial factor.
“Now that we know the truth, Nik and Mr. Suit do look close. The kind of close where they know each other so well that they don’t do small talk anymore. Of course, I can say basically anything in hindsight,” Katie said.
“Yeah, but I was also going to say that the older sister is sitting next to Mr. Suit—”
“Apparently his name is Elijah, by the way. She just called him Elijah.” Amelia was interrupted by Katie, who was paying closer attention to the group’s conversation.
Whilst the two of them were preoccupied trying to recover from the shock of the revelation and adjusting their hypothetical stories, the family in question was starting to pack up.
“Wait they can’t leave yet! We still haven’t figured them out yet and I was having so much fun,” Amelia whined.
Katie shared her disappointment. “I guess that means we should get going too. We just have to wait 5 minutes after they leave. We don’t want to make it too obvious we were spying on them.”
“Okay, act natural. Shit, we’re done with our food and drinks.” Amelia pulled out her phone from her pocket in a frenzied manner and started to scroll aimlessly. In the nick of time too, as the group started to walk to the door at about the same time.
As they were leaving, one of them hung back. It was one half of the estranged couple. To their bewilderment, he stopped right by their table and leaned down. “You got a few things right,” he smirked. “Except Nik’s new girlfriend is the mother of the twins. Surrogate birth, long story.” With that, he walked off to join his girlfriend without waiting for their reply.
Amelia’s jaw dropped. She could only stare as he wrapped his arm around ‘D’ and kissed the side of her head. How much did he overhear? Who else overheard? Katie had her face buried in her hands. Her ears were still peaking out however, and they were very visibly red.
When she couldn’t see them anymore and was sure they wouldn’t be heard this time, she burst out in hysterical laughter. She laughed until she couldn’t breathe. All while her girlfriend shushed her desperately, hating the attention they were getting.
“It’s not funny, Amelia,” she hissed out in warning.
“But… but it is!” Amelia cackled. “He went along with it too. I’ll take it as a win.”
Before long, Katie started giggling. Her girlfriend’s laughter was infectious, and her embarrassment was becoming sillier by the second. “I guess he wasn’t mad.”
“Yeah, I bet he had fun with his girlfriend, listening to us trying to figure out their life story.”
“I did see them giggling to themselves a couple times.” Katie conceded.
“That must’ve been it then. Funny how we ended up entertaining each other.”
The fact that this was most certainly going to be the highlight of the date, made Amelia wonder if she was approaching the day in an entirely wrong way. But then again, this was an amusement park after all. Even if it wasn’t the park itself that entertained them, it got the job done.
Amelia took her girlfriend’s hand. “Want to try out the standing roller coaster?”
“My scream will destroy your ears.”