Page 17 of Stand

“Is she?”

“Dad.” She lengthened the word and elbowed his ribs.

“Well, she only said two words to you.”

“I like her. She doesn’t know you, right? But she helped us anyway.”

“We do know each other, remember?” Ty found himself saying. “We were at high school together.”

“Oh, yeah!” Alyssa’s face lit up. “Were you boyfriend-girlfriend?”

“No!” Okay, he’d overreacted to that. And his face was heating up, which would not help his case with his observant child. “No. We were… in different circles.”

“Which one was she in?”

Alyssa’s eyes were open, clear. Unsuspecting. “The popular crowd,” Ty said.

“Wait—you weren’t?”

He laughed. “Thanks for thinking I’m cool enough to be popular.”

She shrugged. “You’re okay.”

He had to hug her for that. “Well, being a geek wasn’t cool back then. Not like it is now.”

She frowned; he could see that she thought his high school days referred to a time impossibly disconnected from now. He’d thought that too.

“Anyway,” he said. “Sam was smart as well as popular.”

“Yeah! And now she’s an archaeologist. Thatiscool!” One of Alyssa’s friends had shown Indiana Jones at her last birthday party. “Do you think she’d tell me about it?”

“I don’t know if you’re going to see her again, honey. Since she lives out of state.”

“Oh.”

And the faster she went back, the better. Ty didnotwant to meet her on the street.

“Can she come to graduation?” Alyssa said.

Ty disengaged himself from her, stunned. “What?”

“Graduation.” Alyssa looked nervous, but the need was shining from her eyes. “Do you think she’d come? I want to introduce her to Mr. P.” She didn’t seem able to meet his eyes any longer, but dropped hers and found a strand of hair to put into her mouth.

“Mr. P. taughther,” Ty said, not that it was relevant right now. Gods. Could he please get this woman out of his life? Out of his thoughts? His fantasies? He’d wasted countless hours back in school either damning her for being a bully or reliving her pressing against him.

“Did he? Wow.” Mr. P.’s advanced age obviously only now impressed itself upon her.

“And me. I told you that.” Anything to take the subject off Sam Fielding.

“Oh, yeah. I forgot. So can I ask her? Or will you?”

Hell nowas what he wanted to say. “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he prevaricated. “She’s only in town for a few days; she might be leaving tomorrow, for all we know.”

“Can we ask?”

She was so earnest. She wanted this so badly. The poor girl wasn’t going to have any special female in her life there—his mother counted, of course, but she had a full-time job and less time for her grandkids than she’d like.

“Sure. I’ll call her in the morning.”

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