Quicksilver(18)

When I couldn’t think of a reply, he said, “What’s wrong?”

I swallowed twice and then said, “I’m nonplussed.”

“That’s a word I’d never use in a romance novel. Too fancy. You shouldn’t use it in a magazine article, either. Just say perplexed or bewildered, even confused, but never nonplussed. Do you already have a girlfriend?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Do you like girls?”

“Well, of course. Everyone I dated was a girl. It’s just that most girls these days—most guys, too—they’re about social media and what they saw on YouTube and what the influencers say about everything. I just don’t have much in common with most of them.”

“You and Bridget have a lot in common. Wanted by government thugs, on the run, maybe alien DNA. Don’t you like her?”

“Of course I like her. What’s not to like? I love her attitude. And she’s funny, witty.”

“That’s it? Funny, witty, attitude?”

“I’m talking to her grandfather.”

“You’re blushing,” he said. “That’s sweet.”

“Okay, all right, she’s a goddess. She’s so dazzling that I could maybe go blind looking at her.”

He smiled broadly. “That’s better. That’s more like it.”

“But we’ve hardly just met, and I don’t think she likes me.”

“Of course she likes you. She’s been waiting two years for you to show up.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“She knew you’d have blue eyes and that you’d save her life with a car somehow, although she thought you’d be a lot taller and driving a Porsche rather than a Toyota.”

“I’m not short,” I said. “I’m five eleven.”

“Don’t fret about it,” Sparky said. “She’s five six, so you’re plenty tall enough.”

Bridget returned from the ladies’ room, and a waitress arrived to take our drink order—coffee, coffee, cherry Coke—and Sparky went off to the men’s room.

“You’re blushing,” Bridget said.

“No,” I lied, “it’s just warm in here.”

The monsters wouldn’t show up for twenty minutes—I didn’t even know there would be monsters—so I had plenty of time to be further nonplussed before my confusion gave way to terror.

She said, “I should have apologized to you back at the Flying F Ranch. I’m sorry I called you a freakin’ Nazi zombie.”

“I’ve been called much worse,” I assured her, which was true. Those public-school kids who lost the spelling bees had been a foul-mouthed bunch.

“I was still coming out of the chloroform they used on me, confused and sick with worry about Grandpa. I shouldn’t have called you a worthless piece of garbage, either, and I’m sorry I punched you in the chest.”

“You have a solid punch.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“No, no,” I lied. “But you have a very solid punch.”

“Grandpa hung a punching bag from the cellar ceiling and taught me how to go for a guy’s ribs. He sparred with me, too. When I was fourteen, he stopped pulling his punches. He’s a great teacher.”

I was afraid that at any moment she would mention marriage and that I would again be rendered speechless. So I said, “Why did you hide out in a place like that ranch? You’re from Flagstaff. How did you even know about the Sweetwater Flying F?”

“It was once a beautiful resort and also a working ranch, not just a dude ranch, so you could have any level of experience you wanted. That’s where Sparky and Jeanette spent their honeymoon, roping and branding calves, breaking wild mustangs. It was also a rattlesnake farm. Grandpa and Grandma milked venom from the snakes so it could be sent away to make antivenin. Isn’t that a marvelous, different kind of honeymoon?”

“Romantic enough for a Daphne Larkrise novel,” I said.

“Grandma Jeanette must have been something. I never knew her. She died a year before I was born. Grandpa has been a wonderful substitute father, but it would have been nice to have a substitute mother as well. My real mother, Corrine, didn’t want me.”

I couldn’t have stopped looking at her even if something in the kitchen had exploded and a fire alarm had gone off. “Who wouldn’t want you? Anybody would want you.” I heard myself and hurried to clarify. “I mean, why on earth wouldn’t she want you?”

“Sparky and Jeanette couldn’t have children, so they adopted Corrine when she was four. Apparently Corrine’s mother either drank a lot or did drugs during her pregnancy, so Corrine was never right. She was a problem as a child, more of a problem as an adult. Very pretty. I have photos of her. But a week after I was born, she gave me to Sparky, and she split. He never saw her again. He reported her missing, but the authorities couldn’t find a trace of her. Neither could any of the three private detectives that Grandpa hired to chase her down during the first two years after she left. It was like she walked out of this world into another.”

When you were raised in an orphanage, the other kids weren’t all abandoned on a highway when they were three days old. Some ended up at Mater Misericordi? after they were old enough to have known the parents they lost—or the parents who abused them or otherwise failed them. Some hid their pain. Others could not. We were an extended family, and largely a happy one because the Poor Clares loved us and because we cared about one another, but we were aware that our happiness was a ship sailing on waters dark with sorrow.