He shrugs. “Probably not. Still cool, though.”
“Yeah.” I grin. “It was. How are things going here?”
Before he can answer, someone calls his name behind me. I turn to see a middle-aged couple approaching us. The man is quite tall, with very tanned white skin and wiry dark hair, and the woman has short dark-brown hair, light-brown skin, and a smile that looks kind of familiar.
“Oh, hey,” John says, stepping forward to greet them. The woman kisses him on the cheek. “You guys been here long?”
“A little while,” the woman says, smiling. She looks at me with interest.
“This is Emily,” John says. “Emily, these are my parents.”
I blink, startled. John invited hisparents?
I reach out hastily to shake their hands. “Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”
“Call me Carla,” his mother says, leaning in to kiss my cheek. His father does the same and introduces himself as Laurent. He has a faint French accent, and his eyes are the exact same shade of brown as John’s.
“Are you having fun?” I ask.
“Absolutely,” Carla says. “This place is beautiful.”
“Really impressive,” his father adds, looking around. “Are you from Waldon?” he asks me.
“Halifax, originally,” I say. “John told me you’re from Quebec?”
“Not exactly,” Laurent says, and launches into a story about the Toronto suburb where he grew up, and the business he started there that eventually took him to Montreal, and how that led him to the Dominican Republic, where he met his wife. I listen politely, marveling at how different he is from his son. He’s exuberant and slightly loud and really chatty—so chatty, in fact, that Carla and John both tell him to stop talking after about ten minutes.
“You’re going to put her to sleep,” Carla chastises him.
“Oh, nonsense. Emily was interested, weren’t you?” Laurent says.
“Yes, sir,” I say.
Carla puts a hand on my arm. “Don’t humor him,” she advises me. “You’ll end up stuck here all day listening to him go on and on.”
I grin at her. She’s standing so close I can smell her perfume, a bright, floral scent. Laurent smells great, too, a very subtle peppermint scent. It must be a family thing.
“John said you both retired to Summerside?” I ask.
Carla nods. “I still do a bit of work there, just to help out the hospital. They’re so desperate for doctors. I’m an endocrinologist,” she adds.
“Oh, wow,” I say. Then I hesitate. “Er—and what is that, exactly?”
She chuckles. “It’s a doctor who specializes in hormone problems. Adrenal disease, thyroid disease, that sort of thing.”
“Wow,” I say again. “Very cool.”
“Well, it can be. Health care is in such a state right now.” She shakes her head and gives a tiny sigh. “John tells us you’ve started some caregiving work recently?”
He did? I glance sideways at him, but he just looks back at me blandly and takes a sip of his drink.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “Not, like, important nursing stuff or anything. I just do chores and keep people company, really.”
“There’s nothing unimportant about that,” Carla says. “The hospitals on this island are full of people waiting for long-term- care beds, all because they’ve got no one to help them out a little at home.”
I wince. “That’s awful.”
Carla nods. “No one in this country ever seems to think about the future. They think they’re going to be healthy and independent forever, and then they’re absolutely astounded when they get old! As though they didn’t realize it would ever happen to them.”
