Page 23 of Alistair

“Just for employees, and it’s not where park visitors can get to.”

“Have you lived there long?”

There was a moment where he didn’t say anything, and it was a long enough moment that she looked at him and saw his jaw was working. She frowned. What was taking him so long to answer? It was a pretty straightforward question.

Before she could ask what was up, he answered, “Not too long, actually. The apartments are fairly new. I used to live away from the park.”

She stared at him critically for a moment, but the jaw tension was gone now. He glanced at her with a smile, and it made her insides go all melty and she nearly forgot that he’d seemed to be holding back something.

But she didn’t forget. Because she’d been lied to a lot in the past and she didn’t want to start anything off like that.

“Is there something going on?” she blurted.

“What?”

“You seemed to be thinking really hard about an easy question. I told you I’ve got some trust issues, which I’m aware is ameproblem and I’m working on it, but you just gave me some mild red-flag warnings right now.”

“Sorry,” he said, “I was feeling kind of…too old to be living in an apartment, I guess.”

“I live in an apartment,” she pointed out.

“Your apartment is a townhouse and really nice, and not the same as the complex at the park. I wish I had a house to take you back to.”

“Oh.” She let that roll around in her head. “I don’t mind. I would like to have a house someday, though. Like a real one.Where I could plant flowers in flower beds and fight over what color to paint the walls.”

“You could paint anything any color you like in my place.”

“That’s very sweet,” she said with a chuckle. “In the abstract, anyway. Since neither of us has a house, you can promise whatever you like.”

“Good point, but I promise that if we ever have a place together, I will keep my lips zipped about wall color.”

Her mind spun quickly with the beach-themed bathroom she’d always wanted, with sand-colored flooring and pale blue walls like a summer sky.

“I can practically see the wheels turning in your head,” he said, laughing.

“I’ve never had a place of my own to really decorate. It’s fun to think about.”

He pulled down a side road next to the park.

“True. I’ve always wanted a yellow kitchen,” he said.

“Really? That would be pretty. Like sunflowers or daisies or bees? That would be neat.”

“Just anything yellow, I guess. My mom’s kitchen was yellow. I grew up in a trailer and we moved around a lot, but the one constant thing was that yellow kitchen.”

“Where is she?”

“She passed away about ten years ago. I never knew my dad, but I do have a sister. Rowena travels with her family in a circus. They have an elephant act which is pretty cool.”

“A traveling circus? Elephants? That does sound really cool! Where are they now? Do you ever get to see them?”

He explained they were currently in the northwest and wouldn’t be around New Jersey until the fall. “My nephew, Kelley, he’s a vet tech here at the park. He used to work with the elephants in the shows, and I think it’s why he went into veterinary medicine. His wife, Rhapsody, works with him now.”

“That’s neat.”

“Why did you go into teaching?” He stopped at an empty guard station and swiped what looked like an employee badge into a box and then a gate lifted to let them in.

“Well, I went to college for elementary education for two years, and then my college fund got depleted when my sister was in a bad car accident and my parents nearly lost their house because of the medical bills. I dropped out and finished with an associate’s degree I paid for myself, and then I got a substitute teaching certificate so I could start working and pay for my degree, but I never continued.”

---