“Yeah, I’m okay. Just seeing my dad leaves me a little… I don’t know.”
“Sad?”
He looked up at me and searched my eyes but said nothing.
That was all the confirmation I needed. I walked over to him and sat down on the end of the bed with him so I could drape an arm over his shoulders. “I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to watch and wait while your father gets older and more forgetful, but I can imagine how fun it must have been to have him as a dad when you were young. His sense of humor is still very quick.”
Peter chuckled and nodded. “Dad always had a sharp tongue. That’s for sure. I always found myself bearing the brunt of his jokes, of course. Probably because Mikey couldn’t take them without crying like a baby.”
I grinned and crossed one leg over the other. “Tell me about your dad. What was he like? What did he do for work?”
“Trade jobs,” Peter said. “He worked all kinds of them. Construction for a while. Then a mechanic. He was pretty good at anything that involved problem solving and working with his hands. He didn’t have much of a mind for English or creative expression of any sort, but he liked concrete problems with right and wrong answers.”
“Sounds like he was in the right line of work then.”
“He was. He worked a lot, though. It was just him. Our mom left when we were really little. Dad never talked about it much and Mikey and I grew up thinking it was normal that she wasn’t around. I don’t know. I never felt like I was missing out. Dad filled in all the gaps on his own, I guess.”
“That’s pretty incredible, Peter. That takes a strong man to be a single father and full-time employee.”
“He did it with grace and only a few explosive moments over the years. One was when Mikey stole his truck to take it to a party and crashed it into a telephone pole three blocks from the house. He never made it to the party. The other was when I nearly burned the house down playing with matches.”
“Classic.”
Peter smiled and nodded. “I suppose.”
His demeanor had already changed. I leaned against him and rested my cheek on his shoulder. “I wish there was something I could do to buy you a little more time with him. Time where he’s here, you know? Not out at space camp with Archie and Katie.”
Peter snorted.
I kissed his shoulder. “Sorry. Sometimes I make jokes at the wrong moments.”
“No such thing.”
“You say that now, but give it a couple more weeks, and you’ll be wondering why you ever saw potential in me.”
He kissed my forehead. “I seriously doubt that.”
“Is there anything else I can do to help?”
He shook his head. “You’re already helping.”
Chapter 29
Peter
Katie popped up to her feet and spun to face me. Her hair was down and wavy, and I liked how it swished around her shoulders as she pulled the hair tie from her wrist with a snap and began pulling her hair up into a high ponytail. She looped the hair tie and gave the ponytail a sharp tug.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said. “We have time to kill before we head back to see your dad tonight and I haven’t done a proper wander of the property.”
“A proper wander?”
She nodded earnestly. “Yes, of course. Isn’t that half of the fun of staying in a resort like this? I knew the El Cartana like the back of my hand by the third day I was working there. Every spare minute I had was dedicated to exploring. There’s always so much to see and find. Pools, gardens, ponds, wildlife, the beach. Mind you, the Californian coast is nothing like the Caribbean but that’s beside the point.”
There was no way I could turn her down when she was so enthusiastic, so I stood up and agreed to go with her.
We left all our things, including her purse, in the room, changed into more comfortable walking shoes, and set out to begin our adventure down in the lobby.
“We need a drink first,” Katie said. She took my wrist and pulled me toward the cigar lounge off the lobby.
The bar was dimly lit and filled mostly with men puffing on fat cigars or out of wooden pipes that reminded me of something out of my favorite epic fantasy story with smoking wizards and