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Dance noted the flicker of an eyebrow and a faint fluctuation of pitch. She let those observations float away.
Boling began, "You're . . . ?" His eyes dipped to her left hand, where a gray pearl ring encircled the heart finger.
"I'm a widow," Dance said.
"Oh, gosh. I'm sorry."
"Car crash," she said, feeling only a hint of the familiar sorrow.
"Terrible."
And Kathryn Dance said nothing more about her husband and the accident for no reason other than she preferred not to talk about them any longer. "So, you're a real bachelor, hmm?"
"I guess I am. Now there's a word you haven't heard for . . . about a century."
She went to the kitchen to retrieve more wine, instinctively grabbing a red--since that was Michael O'Neil's favorite--then remembered that Boling liked white. She filled their glasses halfway up.
They chatted about life on the Peninsula--his mountain-biking trips and hikes. His professional life was far too sedentary for him so Boling would often jump into his old pickup truck and head out to the mountains or a state park.
"I'll do some biking this weekend. It'll be some sanity in an island of madness." He then told her more about the family get-together he'd mentioned earlier.
"Napa?"
"Right.
" His brow wrinkled in a cute and charming way. "My family is . . . how do I put this?"
"A family."
"Hit the nail on the head," he said, laughing. "Two parents healthy. Two siblings I get along with a majority of the time, though I like their children better. Assorted uncles and aunts. It'll be fine. Lot of wine, lot of food. Sunsets--but not a lot of those, thank goodness. Two, tops. That's sort of the way weekends work."
Again, a silence fell between them. Comfortable. Dance felt no rush to fill it.
But the peace was broken just then as Boling's cell phone hiccuped. He looked at the screen. Immediately his body language had shifted to high alert.
"Travis is online. Let's go."
Chapter 24
UNDER BOLING'S KEYSTROKES, the DimensionQuest homepage loaded almost instantly.
The screen dissolved and a welcome box appeared. Below it was apparently the rating of the game by an organization referred to as ERSB.
Teen
Blood
Suggestive Themes
Alcohol
Violence
Then, with his self-assured typing, Jon Boling took them to Aetheria.
It was an odd experience. Avatars--some fantastical creatures, some human--wandered around a clearing in a forest of massive trees. Their names were in balloons above the characters. Most of them were fighting, but some just walked, ran or rode horses or other creatures. Some flew on their own. Dance was surprised to see that everyone moved nimbly and that the facial expressions were true to life. The graphics were astonishing, nearly movie quality.
Which made the combat and its vicious, excessive bloodletting all the more harrowing.
