Page 118 of Hidden Nature

“Yeah, so wasBuffy the Vampire Slayer. I’ll take that over the white whale any day.”

He laughed. “I missed that one. TheBuffything.”

“Stream the first season sometime. Little blond girl doesn’t run from darkness. She walks into darkness to fight evil, finds her power and purpose, all while navigating the many, many terrors of high school.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“And thanks for dealing with the popcorn in the kitchen, too.”

He hadn’t seen her so much as glance at the kitchen.

“While we were at it. Your father is a genius, by the way. That’s one great-looking fireplace.”

“It really is. See you Sunday.”

He winced at that, but had the sense to wait until he’d walked outside. He liked the Coopers, and liked them a great deal.

He wasn’t antisocial. He wasn’t on Theo’s level of social, which hit way over his limit. He was, Nash decided, social neutral. He liked people well enough, even though people constantly made a mess of things for other people.

And when they got done, the people they’d made a mess of things for made a mess of things for them.

It just went round and round.

He had a circle of friends in New York, and stayed in touch. Even though most of them thought he’d lost his mind when he’d made this life change.

He even intended to have some friends come down for a weekend once he had the house done.

He stood by his truck a moment and studied how close Sloan had parked to the other side. Maybe an inch to spare. The woman was lean, but not that lean.

She’d climbed over to get out the passenger door.

He found her an interesting mix—of what, he hadn’t decided, but an interesting mix.

He couldn’t figure out why a woman looked sexy wearing a tie, but she pulled that one off.

He eased into reverse, then navigated a three-point turn to head down her bump-filled drive.

Sunday dinner. Might as well admit why that had his shoulders tensing. Whenever they’d happened during his childhood, they’dmarked a day of stress, stiffness, interrogations, disapproval, and misery.

Sitting in the formal dining room like characters in a badly written play. The starch in the collar of his white dress shirt—required attire—rubbing at his neck. Sit up straight, don’t slouch. Two hours—set your watch by it—and five courses served by the silent staff, who, on occasion, might send a look of sympathy to him and Theo.

If you didn’t like what they served, you ate it anyway, without complaint or comment.

Otherwise, you still had to eat every bite, but you had to swallow the lecture with it.

He’d have preferred a solid smack to those endless, soul-sucking lectures.

No one physically slapped, but those Sunday dinners still left a mark.

“Deal with it, Littlefield,” he muttered as he pulled up to his own home. “You’re all grown up now.”

Sam spent whatever free time he could steal working on the van. The February virus caused both his work and Clara’s to run shorthanded, and for Clara, added patients.

But he’d managed an hour here, two hours there, carefully followed the instructions and videos he’d found online.

He had to be glad they’d decided to keep their cars and save the van for the mission. They’d considered selling at least one car—he still had payments on his—but they’d decided the mission was too important to risk adding unnecessary miles, risking a breakdown, even an accident.

He’d had his ear pressed to the news, too, but hadn’t heard anything about the police looking for a white van.

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