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Hendrix hesitated as though he might insist on working through dinner. But then he shut down the rig. “Okay,” he said with a tired sigh. “Let’s take a break. It’ll help us get through the next few hours a little more comfortably.”
After deciding what they were interested in eating, she called in an order to the local pizza joint. But instead of starting the drill back up until she needed to leave to get the food, he walked over to a copse of trees and sank down onto the ground in the dappled shade, leaving her with nothing to do except follow him.
They’d been talking most of the day—banal chitchat mostly. Conversation was all they had to help pass the long, tedious hours. They had to speak over the motor of the drill, which didn’t always make it easy to be heard, but she’d told him about Ben and how he’d lied about returning from Salt Lake City. Talulah must’ve mentioned that she’d helped decorate her and Brant’s Victorian, because Hendrix had asked her about that, and she’d told him she loved bargain-hunting and often drove to one of the bigger cities to pick up a couch, chair or other secondhand furniture she’d seen advertised online. She thought she might even start up a resale business one day—when drilling became too rigorous for her. He’d seemed interested in that, for some reason. And then he’d told her about various drilling jobs where he’d experienced something out of the normal routine—one where his rig had been struck by lightning—which in turn spurred some of her own drilling stories.
So far, they’d managed to steer clear of any emotionally charged topics—like her mother, her father and his aunt. And Ellen was glad of that. She didn’t enjoy talking about those people. Talulah was the only one who truly understood what she’d been through and how she felt about it, and that was only because they’d spent so many evenings sitting out on one porch or the other, discussing almost everything.
As she and Hendrix sat beneath the trees, waiting for their pizza to be cooked, they’d used up their small talk. So it felt natural to delve a bit deeper when she asked, “Do you ever wonder about your father?”
He leaned back, propping himself up with his hands. “You mean my sperm donor?”
She bit her lip. He didn’t sound surprised she would know—or particularly resistant to talking about it. Maybe he assumed everyone knew how he came to be. After all, Lynn hadn’t made a secret of it. She’d had to have something to say when asked where his father was, and she’d gone with the truth. He’d told his friends and classmates, too, so most people in Coyote Canyon knew. “Yeah.”
“Not very often. It’s just too bad my mother didn’t know she had cancer when she decided to become a single parent, huh?”
Ellen knew his mother had died when he was only eleven and Lynn had taken him in immediately—just months after she’d married Stuart—but she hadn’t heard many of the details. What information she did get came from Grandma and Grandpa Fetterman, and she’d been so determined not to let them know how left out and hurt she felt that she rarely spoke of Stuart, Lynn or Hendrix.
It was a sore subject for her grandparents, too—the way Stuart had treated his daughter—so they rarely mentioned Stuart or the others themselves, which didn’t exactly give her easy access to what was going on in her father’s life or the lives of his new family.
“She had it since before you were born?”
“No one can say for sure. But they didn’t find it until it’d progressed to stage four. That suggests she’d had it for a while. Then she went through various treatments for six years.”
Ellen dipped her head. She’d been so busy blaming him for replacing her in her father’s affections that she hadn’t spent much time looking at the situation from his perspective, which was probably why she couldn’t hold his gaze when she said, “Must’ve been hard to lose her.”
He’d been teasing her on and off today, making the hours pass quickly, and work that was generally long and grueling had felt like fun. She’d tried not to respond with her own teasing and banter but had failed many times. It was just too hard not to like Hendrix when he was being so charming.
Anyway, the playful version of her nemesis was gone now; she could tell he was dead serious. “At that age?” He nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
He met her gaze. “It’s okay. As you know, I had it pretty good, considering.”
Ellen plucked a blade of grass, which she twirled between two fingers. “Can I ask you another question?”
“Is it personal?” he asked with a chuckle.
“I guess it is.”
His smile returned. “Okay. But then I get to ask you one.”
She tossed away the grass. “Never mind.”
“You’rethatclosed off?” he said with a scowl.
From him? Yes. She needed to be. Getting to know him was tearing down the walls she’d built up, and she needed the protection those walls provided. “I just don’t like talking about myself.”
“I’ve noticed.” He extended his legs, crossing them at the ankles. “But now I’m curious enough to let you ask your question, anyway. What is it you want to know?”
“Do you have any DNA information on your father?”
“I do. No identification or anything but some info that would be helpful for medical purposes—just in case.”
“Are you ever tempted to try to identify him?”
“No.”
He seemed resolute. “Because...”
