Page 47 of The Catch

“And your grandfather? Did you know him well before he took you in?”

“No. Mostly just from pictures. He and my father had a falling out. They weren’t in touch the last few years of my parents’ lives.”

“So he was your father’s father?”

“Yes. What about your parents?” he asked drowsily. “Are they happy?”

That was a strange question, one she’d never been asked before, and she wondered what it was that made him want to know. Nostalgia for his own parents, maybe. Or pessimism borne from his failed marriage. Did he assume the answer already? Maybe he was the type who didn’t believe in true love. Maybe she was.

She pondered the question, digging through a lifetime of memories that she hoped would provide an answer. Were they happy? They’d been married for almost forty years. Something had to make them stay. But if she really thought about it, she’d never seen much affection between them. Nothing to make her say, “look at this. This is love.” They were more like two business partners running a household. They were good at it, though; you’d have to be fond of each other to be good at it.

“I guess they’re as happy as anyone else,” she said, safely. How would she ever really know? How had she never wondered before?

Josh made a sound as if he were agreeing with the notion but shook his head. “Some people really are, though. My parents were happy. I was only a kid, but I remember that very clearly.”

“Tell me,” she whispered.

“My mother was beautiful,” he said. “She had dark hair like yours, but the Italian kind—jet black instead of warm brown. She laughed all the time. Hysterically, like a hyena over the stupidest stuff, and my father would just shake his head and smile. Watching her.”

“Was he tall and handsome like you?”

“He was English. Pale as the moon. He looked like a ghost compared to her and her Tuscan glow, as he called it. His hair was lighter too. When I was a kid, my hair would turn almost blonde in the summer. My mother would say it was my English genes coming out for some badly needed sun.”

Cat laughed quietly, glancing at Josh’s short dark hair and picturing the younger version. “And you got the perfect combination with this skin of yours,” she said, stroking his cheek. “It’s always wasted on the men—the prettiest DNA.”

He snorted a laugh against her skin, then kissed her shoulder. “You’ve got some pretty nice DNA yourself,” he said. “Who do you look like? Your mother or your father?”

“They practically look like twins they’ve been together for so long, so who knows?” He laughed again, and the sound made her body warm and comfortable. She remembered the first time she heard that laugh and instantly craved more. It had a sort of child-like joy to it that she found intriguing, like maybe it was a stowaway from happy times. “My dad’s skin is much darker than mine,” she continued, to Josh’s rapt attention. “My sister Maria got his features; curly hair, big eyes. Olivia is petite like my mother. I got a little bit from both, I guess. I have my grandmother’s ass though. No doubt about that.”

“She’s a kind woman to share,” he said, reaching between her and the mattress and squeezing.

“Who threw the baseball?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“Your scar. Who threw the baseball at you?” All this talk of how their features came to be had her thinking of the ones he’d earned instead of inherited.

Josh pulled his arm back and ran a thumb over the little white line.

“My father, actually.”

She pulled in a startled breath. The picture she’d been drawing cracked and morphed into something else entirely. He must have felt it because he rushed to clarify. “It was an accident,” he said. “The kid next door yelled to me just as he threw it, and I dropped my glove. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a grown man cry like that.”

“That’s terrible,” she said. She could hear his smile as he recounted it, and she smiled too, despite herself.

“There was so much blood, and I could tell he was terrified to bring me in to my mother. Rightly so, since she made his freak out look like a cool, professional assessment. Just like she laughed hard, she was also prone to hysterics when it came to crying.”

“I can’t say I blame her. It must have been scary to see her child like that.”

“She lost her mind. She just kept crying ‘his face, his face!’” Josh laughed. “She was on the phone to a plastic surgeon the next day. She was sure I was going to be deformed.”

Cat joined in his laughter. Josh’s face was quite possibly the most perfect one she’d ever seen, and that scar happened to be the most interesting part.

“So did he have to operate on you? The surgeon?”

Josh’s laughing subsided, and he nuzzled into her shoulder again. “Nah, I canceled the appointment.”

“Yourself?”

---