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Ripley had slept through all the talking, turning over on her back and sleep running from time to time. She did not seem like the alien-chasing warrior they’d named her after.
She was unsure of what she should do in this case. If all they wanted to talk about was aliens, then she should probably step away and think about heading home.
It might be for the best.
In the moment it had seemed like such a great idea to get to know Van and Hale and maybe spend a couple of wild nights with them, but she would probably make a fool of herself. What had she been thinking?
“Oh, but some of them have more than one gender. I’ve found aliens can be very fluid,” Cassidy said with a shake of her head.
She wasn’t sure what she’d really hoped for, but it definitely wasn’t this.
How much longer did she have to sit here and listen to a list of aliens and their attributes? What was the polite amount of time to spend on it? Cancer. She could play the cancer card. She was so tired from fighting the cancer and needed to get to bed early. It was one thing everyone respected, and she’d talked to other survivors and they’d all decided that for at least a year after her last chemo it was a perfectly acceptable card to play. She’d earned it.
“Cassidy, my dear, could you go and ask Zane if he could make a sandwich for me? I’m a little hungry.” Her father patted his wife’s hand.
Cassidy seemed thrilled to do it. She scooted out of the booth. “Of course. And I’ll get us some of the ice cream I keep for our special occasions.”
She moved off toward the kitchen while Max and Rye seemed to pick up on some silent order Mel Hughes gave them.
They gave the excuse of going to grab another beer. Though the service had been excellent, and Elisa didn’t understand why they needed to do it themselves when that Callie lady came by to check on them often. Very often.
The man who’d probably delivered half of her DNA looked grave as he stared at her across the table. “I was worried about this. You have to forgive my wife. She doesn’t understand that most people think we’re crazy for the things we believe.”
She hadn’t expected that. “I certainly don’t think that.”
“But you do. It’s there in the way you pulled back. I’m sorry about that, too. She’s a hugger and doesn’t always understand other people’s boundaries.” His eyes looked older than they had before. “She’s the love of my life, and I have to protect her. I would like to know if you can be kind to her.”
“I haven’t been kind?” She was surprised at the accusation since she’d sat here and listened to everything the crazy lady had to say. She shook her head because stupid therapy made her look at things differently. Her father was right to ask the question. “I’ve been polite. Not kind. In my defense I haven’t had much of a chance to be kind yet.”
“No, but you think she’s weird, and I can tell you’re wondering how long you have to stay,” he replied, though there wasn’t bitterness to his tone. “The answer is you don’t. I understand that we can be a lot. I’m sure I wasn’t what you were expecting.”
“I didn’t know what to expect, but no, you certainly aren’t what I would call my mom’s type.” She wasn’t sure her mother had a real type beyond the dude who would always leave her.
“I wasn’t, and she wasn’t mine. But we worked together quite a bit over a couple of years, and we got to be what I would call friendly. Intelligence can be lonely work. It’s long hours stuck together, mostly waiting for something that might or might not happen. If you want to know about my relationship with Nora, well, we spent time together when we were working but when we weren’t, we didn’t talk. I’m not sure she even liked me.”
“She did.” She’d gone over and over her mom’s journals, looking for anything that would give her a piece of the story. “She thought you were excellent at your job. I’m not sure what that was though. Even in her journals she was vague about the nature of her work at that point in time. She left intelligence after I was born. I think she wanted something with more stable hours. She said she didn’t contact you after she found out she was pregnant because she didn’t think you would be compatible as parents. She thought it would be easier to do it by herself. She was in Europe, and you were here.”
“I like to think I would have moved, but it’s hard to know what we would have done in the past,” her dad mused. “I know I would have wanted a relationship with you, but I also worry that I wasn’t in the best place back then. I could be what your mother would have seen as erratic. I did work for the government. She provided me with logistical support, and more importantly cover because my work was classified.”
