Page 33 of A Dream for Daphne

“Not even close. Not back then. My father was building it before he passed suddenly. But I kept expanding. It’s a risk and worry, but I know I’ll regret if I can’t make it into everything my father dreamed it could be.”

And maybe he was out to prove to the Ellas of the world that you didn’t have to sit at a desk to be successful in life.

“Good for you,” she said.

“Thanks for that,” he said. “Tell me more about you now. Aster works here, so you came to be close to him? I do know he was in the service with Zane and that he got shot saving a girl from an abduction.”

He’d heard those things from Laurel in passing.

“Yes. Our family life wasn’t that wonderful. My father works for an oil company. He does maintenance on the grounds and machinery. My mother does some type of customer service job in an office. Not really sure. She doesn’t talk much about it. We were middle class, but my parents are...selfish is the best word I can use.”

“I’m sorry for that.”

“No reason for you to be sorry. They weren’t around much. They’ve got friends they’d rather spend time with drinking and smoking weed, going to parties, and on vacations. I was left with Aster more times than not.”

“Can’t say that I know what that is like,” he said. “My father wasn’t much of a person to go and do anything. By the end of the day he was exhausted.”

His father was one of the hardest working men he knew. His mother right there with him.

“I bet you were close with your parents,” she said.

“Very. I still have moments when I think of my father. I’m not sure time lessens it. There are touches of him all over my business and when I see someone who knew him or we did work for years ago, they always bring my father up.”

In the beginning, it was a hard thing to deal with, but he started to look at it as good memories rather than ones to drag him into the abyss of sadness.

That was the last thing his father would ever want him to do.

“That’s sweet,” she said. “I bet he was well respected in the community. Trust me, no one brings up my parents’ names in a good light. Not unless it’s one of their partying friends.”

He wasn’t sure how to reply to that.

“So you wanted to move away? What did you do before you came here?”

“Since you’ve already seen all the goods I guess I can give you some history on me.”

He laughed over that statement.

At least she was being a better sport about it all.

“We can look at it that way. Tell me what you’d like.”

“I’m a loser who lived at home until I moved here. Aster went into the service to get away.”

“Leaving you by yourself and I bet he felt guilty about that,” he said.

“He did. But he had to do what he had to and I understood. After high school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do and my parents said they were going to start to charge me rent to stay in the house. I had to get a job to afford it.”

Talk about a shitty thing to be dumped on a kid that was just starting their life.

“I’m guessing you worked part-time prior, right? You seem the type.”

“I did. My parents are slobs, by the way. I know you probably were trying to figure out what I meant with my comment earlier. They are pack rats on top of it. Aster and I did most of the cleaning. Your place looks nice. I can tell the difference between someone picking up clutter and an atomic cleansing.”

He burst out laughing. “Atomic cleansing.”

“It’s a joke. Something I used to say. It’s what my parents are going to need at some point. Aster would come home on leave and have to clean. He just couldn’t stand it. It made him anxious and my parents almost looked forward to it.”

“They took advantage of it,” he said.

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