Page 25 of Factory Controller

He calms me down and we continue on our way. Trent casts a glance back at me and clears his throat.

“Hey, why don’t we talk a little bit? Helps keep the fear at bay.”

“Sure, what do you want to talk about? Wait, I know. What was your childhood like?”

Trent’s face darkens for a microsecond before the grin returns to his face. “Are you kidding? Growing up in the Big Easy, with an awesome and liberated family like mine? Can you ask for a better upbringing? I don’t think so. My life was one big party.”

“That’s great,” I say. “That’s really, really great.”

“What was your childhood like?”

I freeze on the trail like a statue. I feel as if I’ve been slapped.

“My parents left me on the steps of a church when I was a baby. So my childhood kinda sucked.”

TRENT

Heather and I regard each other in silence, the only sounds those of the rainforest. The bombshell she just dropped in my life is still exploding in my brain. Dropped off at a church as a baby? That’s some hard-core Charles Dickens stuff right there.

“I thought you said your parents died?” I shake my head in confusion. “Or did I imagine that conversation?”

Heather looks away, pulling her lips into a tight line. “That’s just what I tell people when they ask about my parents.”

“For goodness sake, why?” I spread my hands out wide. “Why not just tell the truth?”

“Because if you say your parents are dead, then people back off because it’s become awkward. If you say you’re an orphan, it’s not perceived nearly as sensitive of a subject. The questions come on like the rain here in the jungle.”

“Questions?”

She turns a grim expression my way, her voice tight when she speaks. “Did you ever find your real parents? Why did they give you up? Did you get adopted? It turns into this, this…”

Heather gestures in the air as if literally clutching at the right words.

“…this thing, this conversation I don’t want to have. Do you understand?”

We begin walking anew, abreast on a wide swath of the trail. I consider her for a long moment, gathering my thoughts before I speak. Do I really want to open up to her? To anybody?

“I think I do understand, a little.”

“How? You said you had a great childhood.”

“I did. My childhood was fantastic.” I step over a gnarled tree root upthrust from the path like the grasping hands of a giant, and offer her a hand past it. Heather accepts my assistance and we move past the obstacle. “I was legally an adult when my world came crashing down.”

“What happened?”

I sigh. “You don’t really want to know, do you?”

“Hey, Doctor Phil.” She glares daggers at me. “You’re the one who said we should talk to keep the fear at bay. So talk. I told you my tragic backstory, now you have to reciprocate.”

I chuckle softly. “Is that a rule? I’ve never heard it before. All right, the short answer is my parents died.”

She sucks in a sudden gasp of breath, eyes alight with sympathy. “That’s awful. What happened?”

“Drunk driver.” I pause at the base of a long rise and take a drink from my dwindling canteen. “Turned onto the interstate going the wrong direction with his headlights off.”

“Good Lord.”

“The cops said the drunk was going more than a hundred when he hit my parent’s car. No skid marks. Guy didn’t even hit his brakes.”

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