“Wanna eat out by the pool?” I asked.
“Sure,” she agreed, grabbing her coffee.
“I like this one, Cay,” Eddie said beneath his breath as I passed.
I was starting to agree.
“Oh, wow. This is nice. It must be nice on the really muggy days,” she said as she lowered herself down at the edge of the pool and slid her legs in.
“You’re not from around here, right?”
“Right.”
“Are you going to tell me where youwerefrom?”
“It would be easier to tell you where I wasn’t from. We traveled a lot when I was growing up. Lived the longest in upstate New York and in Wyoming.”
“Two very different places.”
“Are they?” she asked, shrugging.
“Why’d you move around so much?”
“My father’s work. He did… consulting.”
“Are you being vague on purpose?”
“My father is ex-CIA. And he had a lot of very unique and in-demand skills.”
“Hence how you turned out.”
“Pretty much.”
“Only child?”
“I know you haven’t met my father, but I don’t think there’s a second woman in the world who would be willing to be tied to him for eighteen years.”
“Was your mom in the picture?”
“She didn’t really want to be a mom. I was a whoopsie baby. She was really into her career. Which, as an adult, I respect.”
“But it hurt as a kid?”
“Um, I think it was more confusing than anything. She wasn’t around often enough for me to genuinely miss her. And for all his faults—and believe me, there are many—my father was more equipped to be a parent. He wasn’t warm and fuzzy or anything, but he was able to give me the one-on-one attention I needed.”
“When did you see your mom?”
“Mostly when I had inconvenient school breaks. When I was in actual school.”
“You dropped out?”
“No. But anytime we were traveling, I did distance learning or had tutors.”
“Was that lonely?”
“I mean, I could easily be really lonely in school too. I was a little different from kids my age. Probably because I was around my father a lot, and that meant I was around his friends and clients. Everyone was an adult. So I was better with adults than with kids my age. And he did try to make sure I always had contact with people my own age.”
“Classes. But not fun shit?”
