I guess there are brief spoilers here for A Conflict of Parallels in the sense that if you don't yet know the name and sex of the Waige baby…you will now. (Heidi you are not allowed to read this until you catch up you hear?) Also, full disclosure, this is 100% inspired by a Tumblr post.
"Hello!"
The high – pitched voice of his sister cut through Ralph's headphones, so he lowered the volume on his laptop, curious as to what game she was playing with her toy animals this time. Whatever it was, it was undoubtedly more interesting than the music video Patty had e - mailed him.
"I'm not allowed to talk to strangers."
Suddenly realizing this was not a typical game, Ralph threw the laptop onto the coffee table and whirled around to see her standing in front of the open door, looking up at a tall black man holding a box. "Amber!" He hurried up behind her and grabbed her arm, pulling her around to face him. "You do not open the door." He looked up at the man. "Can I help you with something, sir?"
"Just have a delivery for you," he said, holding the box up and out to read the label. "Well, I'm assuming you are not Paige O'Brien. Might that be this little lady right here?"
"That's our mother," Ralph said. "She's out right now, am…am I allowed to receive it?"
"Absolutely," he said, setting the box down just inside the door. "just sign here, please," he said, holding out a clipboard. Ralph scanned the top – Lady of L.A. – and signed on the line. "Thank you. I, uh…" he fished in his pocket, pulling out a couple dollars. "Here you go. Thanks a bunch."
"Thank you, sir. Have a good day. And Happy Valentine's Day." He cocked his head. "I've been delivering these for twelve years now and that's always a weird one to say to folks. Much easier on Easter. Doesn't sound like flirting."
Ralph laughed. "I feel that. Have a good one." He looked at Amber. "Say bye bye."
Amber looked up at him.
"Come on, Amber. Say bye bye to the man."
She turned her face into Ralph's leg, putting her hand up to block the delivery man from view. Ralph looked at him apologetically, and the man chuckled. "You guys have a good day."
"What is the present?" Amber asked, bouncing up and down as she watched Ralph pick up the box and then followed him to the table. Now that they were alone again, she was back to her bubbly self. "What is the present?"
"It's for Mom," he said, using his keys to snap the binding. Inside the box was, "oh wow, look at this." Ordinarily he wouldn't open a box meant for his mother – but Lady of L.A. was a flower shop, and it was always better to get anything into fresh water right away. He lifted it out of the box.
"Fowers and chocolate?"
"Flowers and chocolate, yes" Ralph said, settling it on the table. "Do you want to read the card?" He plucked it off of the little plastic trident that protruded from the arrangement. He handed it to her without looking at it – it wasn't like there would be bad words on it. "Here, tell me what it says."
"Dear Mommy," Amber said, holding the card in her left hand and touching each word individually with her right index finger. "Happy Balentine Day. I lub you e…e…"
"Sound it out," Ralph said, dropping to his knees next to his sister and wrapping his arms around her.
"E…eb – er – y. I love you ebery day. You can n…n – e – b – er possibly now…"
"Know."
"Yes. Know how much. Lub, Daddy!" Amber threw her arms up in the air and giggled. The card went flying before Ralph could register exactly how the card ended. He scrambled for it, and when his fingers closed around the shiny paper, he straightened up and his eyes flew over the card. She'd missed a few words – like the note began Dear Paige instead of Dear Mommy, but she got the rest of it right.
Dear Paige. Happy Valentine's Day. I love you every day. You can never possibly know how much. Love…
Ralph's brief earlier look at the bottom of the card caused his heart to start racing, and confirming what he thought it said did not provide any relief.
Love, a secret admirer.
A secret admirer.
What in the damn hell.
Of course, it wasn't like Ralph was worried about his parents' relationship. They had learned a long time ago that it didn't matter if someone on the outside had any sort of feelings. They were solid, and that was all that mattered.
But that didn't mean that knowing his mother had a secret admirer didn't upset him. She was married. She had kids. It was Valentine's Day. It was shitty timing in more ways than one.
"Sitty?"
Did he say that last part out loud? Ralph looked at his sister in alarm. "No. Nothing."
Her eyes brightened as if she had just solved a Millennium Prize Problem. "Sitty timing!"
Of course. She wouldn't repeat bye bye but somehow she knew what the swear words were.
Ralph returned to the coffee table and grabbed his laptop, pulling up Lady of L.A.'s web site and searching through the offered arrangements until he found one that looked like what was sitting on his table. It was expensive. Probably expensive enough that a credit card was used.
It wasn't difficult to hack into their database; he regularly hacked into the accounts of spies and government officials and a flower shop had far less security. Once in, it was easy to search for the order attached to the shipping label with his mother's name. The sole note on the order made his heart sink.
In – store/cash payment 02/04/28.
Well, damn. No, Ralph thought, knowing this time he was not actually speaking aloud, well shit.
Maybe it was Collins. He had apparently been killed at some point around the time Florence and Sylvester got married, and there was even a body, dental records, everything that in any other case would conclusively prove he was dead. They had found out from Interpol when Amber was three weeks old, and until today, Ralph truly believed he was gone.
But if he was still alive, this was exactly the sort of crap he would pull. One more effort to split up the core of Scorpion, the people who Scorpion had conclusive proof the company couldn't survive without.
"Hey hey hey!" Ralph turned around, slamming his laptop shut as his parents walked through the door. Paige looked at him in confusing, the cheer leaving her face. "What were you watch…never mind, I don't want to know."
He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm totally watching dirty videos with my little sister running around."
"What's this?" Walter asked, and Ralph craned his neck around to see him studying the flowers. He should have hidden them, at least until he figured out who the Hell had sent them. The mention of Amber made him even more nervous. He had spent the last five years glad that Mark Collins and his little sister had never shared the world.
"Mommy!" Amber screeched, running into the room and throwing her arms around Paige. Smiling, Paige bent and hugged her back. "Hey, baby. Did you see the pretty flowers?"
"Sitty timing," Amber said. Ralph hissed under his breath. Thankfully, Paige didn't notice. She was reaching for the card.
Actually wait, Ralph thought, no, not thankfully. Don't read that. Amber cursed! Focus on that!
"Dear Paige," she started. "Happy Valentine's Day. I love you every day. You can never possibly know how much. Aww," she said, glancing at Walter. Ralph felt his stomach turn anxiously. Paige continued. "Love…a secret admirer."
"What?" Walter asked, peering over her shoulder. "Love who?"
"A secret admirer," Paige said, cocking her head. "Huh."
Walter squared his shoulders, his hands curling into fists at his sides. "I'll kill him."
"You know who sent it?" Ralph asked, glad that Amber, who was currently hugging Walter's leg and singing something under her breath, didn't seem to sense the tension.
"I'll kill him," Walter repeated. "I'll find him and I'll kill him."
Collins? Ralph wanted to ask.
"Of course it's written in the store clerk's handwriting," Walter said, wrinkling his nose. "Well. I'll have to get on down there and demand to see the credit card statements."
"Uh…" Both Walter and Paige turned to look at their son. "It was paid in cash. I hacked the database."
They looked at each other – again in unison – and Paige cleared her throat. "You hacked into Lady of L.A.'s sales records?"
"Well, I, uh…I want to know. You know. Who's messing with you guys like that."
"Messy, messy, messy," Amber said, sounding eerily like the antagonist from Frosty The Snowman.
"I'll go down there," Walter said, shoving the card in his shirt pocket. "I'll get to the bottom of this. Nobody calls themselves my wife's secret admirer."
"What are you going to do if you find him?" Paige asked, looking almost amused. "Beat him up?"
"I could beat him up. I'm offended at your implication that I could not. Why would…" Walter faced her and folded her arms. "It's Tim, isn't it?"
Well, Ralph thought, that was actually preferable to his Collins theory.
"Maybe I couldn't beat up Tim," Walter said. "But I could give him a stern talking to. I could – I could bring Happy! He is terrified of Happy. Come to think of it, he would probably be scared of Florence, too. I'll bring both of them. I think I'll do that. I'll be back. I love you. Okay. Going." Walter grabbed a hat as he marched toward the door. He never wore hats, but clearly wanted the emphasis of slamming it down on the top of his head as he marched out of the condo.
"I can't believe this," Ralph said, reaching down and hoisting Amber up to his hip. "You think Tim Armstrong sent these? He has a lot of nerve…"
Paige shook her head. "No. Tim didn't send them."
"We can't be sure. But if not him, who? I actually have a theory, but I really, really hope it's not the case." Ralph shifted awkwardly. "I want to tell you but I don't want you to get upset."
Paige cocked her head. "Uh…whatever you're thinking, it's not correct."
"How do you know?"
"Ralph," Paige said slowly, "The flowers are from your father."
Ralph blinked in surprise. "Like…Drew?"
The surprised blink came from his mother this time. "What? No. Your dad, y – Walter, Ralph. They're from Walter."
"Huh?" Ralph said, cocking his head to the side.
"Huh?" Amber said, mimicking his tone as she tipped her own head.
Paige shook her head. "I keep forgetting you haven't been down here the past two Valentine's Days. Three years ago, your dad and I had a big fight. Nothing serious in terms of the grand scheme of things, but the biggest fight we had had in a while. It led to both of us declaring Valentine's Day was stupid, but we both still secretly wanted to celebrate. So we were out somewhere and there was this roadside florist thing, and Walter bought me a few roses. He had them write – we were both standing at the little counter – a note to me signed a secret admirer. I rolled my eyes, and we both laughed, and it…it's just sort of become a tradition now. Flowers, chocolate, and a note from this supposed secret admirer." She gave a little laugh. "It's him, Ralph. This thing about beating the guy up? Storming out? It's a front. Usually he just goes to his computer and pretends he's hacking the flower shop to figure out who it is, but you beat him to that punch. So my guess is he'll wander around outside for a little bit and then come back in and declare he's showed the guy a thing or two. Then later on when Amber is asleep he'll ask me what I would do if I ever met my secret admirer, and…" Paige trailed off, clearing her throat. "And then…"
"And then you pull him down the hall and show him." Ralph nodded. "I'm twenty – three, Mom, don't act like I didn't see where that was going."
"Anyway," she said, "seriously, don't worry. It's just sort of this unspoken…thing we do now. I promise. These flowers are one hundred percent from him. How else would he know for a fact whose handwriting was on the card?"
The woman made a solid point. "Thank God." Amber was squirming, and Ralph let her down, hearing her footsteps as she ran toward her room. He stepped forward and hugged his mother.
"Sorry we scared you there," Paige said, sounding a little bit sorry but a lot amused.
"I'm just glad it wasn't…" He actually thought Mark Collins was sabotaging his parents by sending anonymous flowers. God, Ralph. "I'm glad." He stepped back and smiled at her. "I like that."
"Me too. Now, now that that's been worked out, you and I need to talk because I'm pretty sure your sister said 'shit' earlier."