Tina Wainscott – The Best Of Me (страница 9)
LUCY FINISHED packing up the apartment of the man who had fathered her. She put the maps in a separate box, not exactly sure what she was going to do with them. Her mother thought she was crazy for coming down to this “tropical infestation of drugs and bugs,” but Lucy was glad she’d come. This gave her a sense of closure she’d never had concerning her birth father.
Her mother called Sonny a bum, a loser, and she’d wanted that influence nowhere near her daughter. Lucy knew her mother hadn’t made it easy for Sonny to keep in touch, but she still wished he had. Maybe he had been a bum in some ways, but he’d been her father. She decided that she was proud to call him that.
She flicked on the small television to watch the weather. It still amazed her that she hadn’t thought about work, much less home, since she’d left.
Cold and rainy in St. Paul. Time to call her best friend Vicki and rub it in. Vicki was a journalist for one of the large St. Paul newspapers. They’d met years ago when Vicki did a piece on Advertising Genius, and they’d been friends ever since. She dialed the number, waiting to hear Vicki’s always-cheerful voice. Sometimes Lucy wished she could be more like her friend, spontaneous and carefree. Lucy couldn’t remember ever being that way, even when she was little. Be a good girl, Lucy. Act like a proper lady now.
“Hello!” Vicki answered breathlessly.
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Lucy! It’s about time! Hold on, let me get my portable phone. I just walked in.” After a second, she said, “I’m looking at a picture from a magazine of the Bahamas with beaches as white as snow and water the color of glass cleaner that can’t be real. So…is it beautiful there?”
Lucy bit her lower lip as the image of Chris flashed through her mind. “Actually, I haven’t had a chance to look at the beach.” And the water was right there beyond the park’s boundaries.
“Oh, Lucy, that is so like you! This is supposed to be a vacation, isn’t it?”
“Yes and no. But it’s more complicated than that. I have to decide what to do with the park. And there’s this guy who’s taken custody of the dolphin there and is training—or rather untraining him to set him free.”
“A guy?” She could see Vicki’s blond eyebrows shooting up in interest.
“Yes, a guy. Anyway, I’ve been busy—”
“What about the guy?”
“He’s not that kind of a guy.”
“What is he, then?”
“What I mean is, it’s not like that. Don’t romanticize it, please.” Lucy laughed at the concept. “He and I barely get along.”
“Is he cute?”
“Mmm, yeah, I’d say that. Tall, blond curly hair, thin but muscular, and these green eyes that—he’s okay.”
“Lucy,” Vicki said, drawing out her name. “You’re holding out on me.”
Lucy looked around, paranoid that somehow someone would be standing there. “This is going to sound like a romance novel, but when I look at his eyes, it’s like I’m falling in. All right, he’s gorgeous, but that’s all there is to it. He spends his days saving dolphins. I mean, that’s his job. Sort of, because he doesn’t get paid for it. But he says he’s not a hero, and I believe he does feel that way.”
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