But all he does is smile.
At least he’s happy.
I reach for my phone beside me and check the time. Finally, it’s noon.
I tap on Dad’s name and lift the phone to my ear. It rings only once before he picks up.
“Hey, Levi,” he says.
I hear the sound of gravel crunching, followed by the creak like he’s walking up wooden steps.
“Hey,” I say. “Where are you?”
“Just getting home. Took lunch a little early and went for a walk.”
The familiar sound of the front door opening and closing comes through the phone, and I smile. Dad works from home, and once spring hits, he goes on a walk every day for lunch.
“Where’d you go today?”
“Just up the road. Talked to Scott for a bit, then looped around to the beach.”
I nod slowly as my chest tightens and I shift my gaze back to the clouds drifting over the buildings. “How’s he doing?”
“Pretty good,” Dad says. “One of their larger fields has been giving them trouble, so they’re in a push to optimize the rest of the farm. Sounds like a ton of work.”
I blow out a breath. “Yeah. It is.”
I just supported a large dairy farm with that last year, after they lost half their herd to a bacterial outbreak. We had to overhaul how they tracked everything, from feed schedules to supplier timelines, so they could get their records in order and qualify for emergency funding. I ended up building a lot of new systems for them from scratch to optimize every inch of that farm I could, and it was a solid few months of full-time work. But it’s my favourite type of work.
“Where are they at with it all?” I ask, picking at a non-existent fluff on my sweatpants.
“I’m not sure. We didn’t get into many specifics.” He chuckles. “Maybe he should call you.”
I huff out a breath of laughter. “Well, Iamunemployed now.”
Dad sighs. “No leads?”
“None that I feel comfortable with,” I say, watching as Winston gets up to locate another tennis ball. But he won’t beable to, because I have them all locked away, so my floors aren’t littered in tiny rubber pieces before the day is done.
“Well…” Dad says slowly, and I hear the coffee machine brewing in the background. “Maybe it’s time to take a break. Take a couple months off and travel. Or… come visit your family for the summer.”
I smile. “Sounds boring.”
He snorts. “Watch your mouth.”
Winston appears before me, dropping a chewed-up, slobbery piece of tennis ball on my lap. Gross.
“Yeah,” I say, picking it up and tossing it onto his bed so he chases it, “I can come visit.”
“Well, don’t soundtooexcited,” Dad says, and I can hear the smile in his voice.
I laugh. “I am excited. Sorry, I’m just… feeling frustrated.”
“I get it,” he says. “Well, I think it will be good for you to get back here for a bit. Surround yourself with the peaceful quiet and the reason you got into this line of work in the first place.”
“Yeah…” I nod slowly. “That actually sounds nice.”
“I know it does. And make sure you tell your mother it was my idea.”
