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Phichit couldn’t help the snickering. “You realize this is, like, the biggest cliché yet, right?”
“I know, but that doesn’t stop it from happening.” Celestino waved a hand at the AI housekeeper. “Teach me how to get this stupid thing to listen to me so I don’t need Phailin to tell it to send out the Roomba?”
“First things first, let’s check the language settings.” Phichit did, and had to laugh. “Yeah, about what I figured. Cherry changed it to only recognize Thai again.”
“Ugh. Those kids are going to be the death of me.”
“You say that all the time. You haven’t been right yet,” Phichit reminded him as he fixed the language settings to accept English and Italian commands. “Do I need to remind you who talked me into keeping them in the first place?”
Cherry and Phailin were Phichit’s nieces, the children of his sister Malee. When Malee and her husband were killed by a drunk driver, Phichit’s first instinct was to take the kids to one of his other siblings. It would mean uprooting them from the life they’d come to know – Malee had married an American man and they made their home in California – but the rest of the family was in Thailand.
Phichit, at least, split time between Thailand and America. In the skating off-season, he held skating camps and ran Phichit on Ice in Thailand; the most talented skaters he found came with him to America during the skating season to work with Celestino or one of his apprentices. It would still mean uprooting them from their home in California to come to Detroit, but a move to Thailand could wait a few months and be with someone they knew well.
Phichit’s main objection had been Celestino. At forty, Phichit was fine to take in a five-year-old and two-year-old; Celestino was sixty-five. Phichit was thriving running his show and scouting runs and training camps, but only with Celestino’s support. Ending his relationship with Celestino was absolutely out of the question.
“No, you don’t need to remind me,” Celestino said. “I still stand by everything I said. It was the best thing for the girls, even if it was supposed to be temporary, acting as a bridge to moving to Thailand and staying with one of your other siblings long-term. I’m just claiming one of the perks of being an old man raising children and being grumpy about it.”
“Heh, fair enough, I guess. You know if it ever does get to be too much…”
“I need to talk to you about this anyway,” Celestino interrupted before Phichit could force out the suggestion of giving up their girls. “Things are getting to be a bit too much for me, but the solution isn’t to shuffle the girls off to someone else.”
Phichit’s heart had clenched up, but now, he relaxed. As much as he hated to admit it, Celestino at seventy-two was definitely struggling to keep up with the demands on his time. “So you’re thinking of… retiring fully, or just cutting back on the coaching? Handing it off to assistants?”
“I had a meeting with my assistants yesterday to talk about a plan where the only traveling I do is between here and Thailand, with you and the girls. I’ll be available to help with music selection and choreography and give feedback on any routines any of the skaters want to show me, but I won’t have the long hours of practice and drills and coordinating rink time and cross training. We’re all talking about it with our families, and then meeting again next week to decide whether that’s the way we want to go.”
“Well, I’m all for it. We’ll need to talk to Cherry and Phailin about it, but a soft retirement makes sense for you.” He grinned, mischief lighting up his face. “Maybe you can use the extra free time to actually learn Thai so Phailin can’t prank you like this!”