Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
I set the program back down on the table. “I’m going with option C. None of the above.”
“Well, I do think it’s kinda crazy how obsessed Jim Bob is with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s certainly not obsessed with me that way. When I said I wanted out—mostly out, not all the way out—but when I said, ‘I’ve got a business to run, Jim Bob, and that’s my number one priority,’ he didn’t even blink. He just said, ‘OK, Lowyn. That’s fine with me. Good luck.’ Or something of that nature. He didn’t care. He didn’t care when Clover left. Hell, her whole family left. So why is he so stuck on you?”
“You tell me.”
“The only thing that sets you apart is what you did twelve years ago and how you reacted to it afterward. But how does any of that relate back to being the preacher? Because I can’t see the connection.”
“That makes two of us.” But it’s a lie on my part. And I suddenly have an urge to tell Lowyn about the secrets Jim Bob is hiding. To tell her all about the fourth point on the cross and how there’s more to the story about my sister almost being kidnapped.
But then Lucy is back with a platter of pastries, so the quiet between Lowyn and I continues while she pours our coffee, does another curtsey, and disappears.
And by this time, the subject of the conversation has shifted to food. Lowyn picks up a small, round pastry covered in large sugar sprinkles and layered with cream cheese and berries. “Want a bite?”
She holds it out to me and I take one. “Fuck, that’s good.”
“April is one hell of a baker.” Then she takes a bite too, moaning a little when all those flavors hit her taste buds.
I add some cream to my coffee and sit back, sipping it. Just watching her polish that little pastry off. She nods and sighs once it’s gone.
“There are more. Have another.” I point to the tray, which is holding way too many pastries for just two people, and they are all as exquisite-looking as the little berry pie.
She picks up something in the shape of a pinwheel and eats that too. Then she dabs her mouth with a real cloth napkin, and sets it back in her lap.
“Now what, Lowyn?”
“We’re just gonna sit here and have a nice time, Collin. Tell me about what you’ve been doing. Tell another story about where you’ve been.”
Most of what I’ve been doing is not appropriate conversation for a fake first date. But I do have one or two stories that fit the bill.
So I start talking.
“Iwas in Japan about four years ago.”
“What were you doing there?” I ask him.
“I was watching people. And guarding one in particular. It was Chinese New Year, and they have this incredible lantern festival in Nagasaki. For me, just a guy from West Virginia, it was chaos. And loud. And bright.” He pauses to smile here. “Maybe you don’t know this, but lantern festivals tend to have a lot of light.”
“Is that where they send balloons up with candles in them, or something?”
“Yeah, kinda like that. But they’re not balloons. The ones that float up are lanterns. The hot air inside them is what makes them do that. But they’ve got more than just lanterns at these festivals. Not just that shape, I mean. Some were in the shape of giant animals, and people, and some floated on the water. It was just really cool.”
“I wish I could’ve been there.”
He sighs. “It would’ve been way different if you were.”
“How so?”
“Well, I would’ve enjoyed it more, of course. The whole thing was kind of annoying from a security standpoint.”
“Were you guarding someone special?”
“A minister of state’s six-year-old daughter.”
I picture this and smile. “Was she a handful?”
“I am embarrassed to admit that she got away from me twice that night.”
“Oh, no!”
“She was that kind of kid. Always up to something. I actually lost her for about twenty-five minutes the second time. I found her curled up with a kitten in a pachinko arcade.” I laugh, but he lets out a long sigh. “She got me fired. I had been working that job, protectin’ that damn kid for six months. And what she did that night got me fired.”
I tsk my tongue.
“But the funny part of this story is that two years ago she wrote me a letter apologizing for being bad and she invited me to her birthday party in Paris.”
“Did you go?”
“I couldn’t. The congressional hearings were just getting started.”
“Did you ever talk to her again?”
He nods, but stays silent for a moment. “Her father was assassinated about a year later and by that time the hearings were over, we had been cleared, and so I saw her at the funeral in Tokyo.”