Chapter 4 #2
He subsided. Cassidy turned a page in her library book and said without looking up, “He practiced his phone voice while we walked over here. Unfortunately, he uses an English accent.”
“It sounds more official,” Noah said with dignity.
“I’ll bet it did,” Bonnie replied, amused. She was tempted to let him answer a call just to hear it.
Noah changed subject abruptly. “Do you think Gray will come in today?”
“I have no idea.”
“Did you give him any forms he hasn’t turned in yet?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
“Yippee! I bet he comes in today!”
“He's a busy person, Noah.”
“Yes, but he's very punctual about returning forms,” Cassidy interjected. “Statistically, he’s likely to . . .”
“Please don't finish that sentence,” Bonnie said.
Cassidy finished it anyway. “. . . come in today.”
She rolled her eyes at her daughter. Cassidy rolled her eyes back.
Darn it. Cassidy was right, and they both knew it. At least she hadn’t commented on how her mother was wearing more make-up than usual and had slept with her hair in curlers last night. Flummoxed, Bonnie went back to opening the mail.
The hallway door opened at eleven forty-seven.
Noah practically levitated out of his chair, he was so excited.
Gray came in carrying a large paper bag in one hand and a cardboard drink carrier with four tall Styrofoam cups in the other.
He wore casual jeans and cowboy boots, both just worn enough to be sexy. His brown hair was windswept from outside, and he looked slightly startled to find both children staring at him intently.
Noah was as delighted as an eager puppy. Cassidy gave off the satisfaction of a scientist observing a variable she'd predicted correctly.
Gray smiled at Bonnie. “Rose mentioned your kiddos have the day off and came to the office with you. I hope it's all right that I brought lunch.”
Bonnie smelled cheeseburgers. “Gray, you didn't have to . . .”
“Cheeseburgers,” Noah said reverently.
“And fries,” Gray said with a grin. “And milkshakes.”
“What flavor?” Cassidy asked, appearing at Noah's other elbow.
“Chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla. And a coffee milkshake for your mom.” He glanced at Bonnie. “Rose said you would want a coffee shake.”
Bonnie accepted the cup, took a sip, and felt something in her shoulders unknot. She couldn’t remember the last time she had a milkshake. It felt decadent. Fun. “Thank you, Gray. This was very kind of you.”
“I also brought the forms from yesterday.” He produced a red folder and set it on her desk. “All done. Numbers five through nine.”
“You numbered them?” Cassidy blurted, peering at the folder he’d opened to show Rose. “That’s how Mom does it.”
“It is your mom's system,” Gray said. “She numbered the forms for me. I would already be lost if she hadn’t made me a master list and organized everything.”
Cassidy glanced at her mother with an arch expression that made Bonnie wince. Nine-year-olds weren’t supposed to know about attraction and crushes, were they? Surely not. And yet, Cassidy’s gaze was all too knowing as her daughter looked back and forth speculatively between her mother and Gray.
Yes. they both loved organization. But that didn’t automatically make them a match made in Heaven. It doesn’t hurt, though, Bonnie allowed.
She cleared a corner of her desk while Gray pulled up another chair. Noah installed himself beside Gray with his cheeseburger and question notebook and launched directly into interrogation mode.
“What's your favorite animal?”
“Functionally or aesthetically?” Gray replied.
Noah's brow furrowed. “What does aesthetically mean?”
“What it looks like versus what it does.”
“Oh.” Noah considered this for a moment. “Both.”
“Functionally, the tardigrade. It can survive in outer space, at the bottom of the ocean, and in a volcano. Aesthetically . . .” He paused, thinking. “Probably the okapi. It looks as if someone built an animal out of leftover parts from other animals but somehow it works perfectly.”
Noah wrote both of these down. “What's a tardigrade?”
“A microscopic animal that looks like a tiny, eight-legged bear. It’s commonly called a water bear.”
“A WATER BEAR.” Noah’s mind was clearly blown. “Are they real? Can I pet one? Can I have one as a pet?”
“Yes, they're real. But you can only see one under a microscope and you’d squish it if you tried to pet it. They're way too small to be a good pet, unfortunately.”
“Bummer.” Noah wrote water bear in large letters and underlined it twice. “What about you, Cass? What’s your favorite animal. Functional and ascetically?”
“Aes-thet-ic-ally,” Cassidy pronounced slowly for Noah. “I choose the same animal for both. The octopus.”
Really? That surprised Bonnie. She’d assumed a nine-year-old girl would pick something fuzzy and cute like a cat or bunny. “Why an octopus?” she asked her daughter.
“They have three hearts and blue blood, and they're really smart.”
“That’s true,” Gray agreed. “They can solve surprisingly complex puzzles. And they have a completely different kind of intelligence than vertebrates. They're solitary animals, so they didn't evolve social intelligence the way primates did. The octopus developed along a totally separate path.”
“Convergent evolution,” Cassidy blurted.
Gray looked at her with sharp attention. “That's exactly right. Do you know much about it?”
“I read a book about it. The eye evolved independently something like forty times in different species.” She paused. “I thought that was interesting. The same solution but arrived at separately.”
“It's one of the most interesting concepts in biology,” Gray added. “The idea that certain solutions are so good Nature keeps re-inventing them even without knowing the other versions exist.”
Bonnie enjoyed watching her daughter talk with this man about convergent evolution over a picnic in her office. Something was loosening inside her. Unwinding. Like a knot that had been too tight to unravel for a long time but whose fibers were finally relaxing and letting go enough to untangle.
She’d had no idea that Cassidy knew about convergent evolution.
She knew her daughter was bright and curious and read constantly, but the specifics of what was going on in her daughter’s busy mind were often opaque to her.
Cassidy rarely volunteered to share what she knew.
She had to be asked a specific question to get her talking.
Gray had asked the right question. On the first try.
“What do you want to be?” Noah asked Gray. “When you're done being a fireman.”
“I think I might like to keep doing some genetics work. Develop cattle breeding programs, maybe. Work on conservation genetics. A lot of species need help maintaining genetic diversity if they’re to survive.”
“Endangered species?” Cassidy asked.
“Yes. But also species whose populations are just cut off from one another or isolated by man’s activities and can’t genetically mingle on their own.”
Gray and Cassidy traded smiles.
“What about you two?” Gray asked the kids. “What do you think you might want to do when you grow up?”
Noah didn't hesitate. “Be an astronaut. Or a chef. Or a marine biologist. Or all three.”
“Ambitious,” Gray responded. “You'd need physics, culinary school, and a marine science degree. Doable if you start early.”
“I'm only seven,” Noah pointed out.
“Good point. You have enough time to do all three.” He turned to Cassidy. “How about you?”
“I don't know yet. Something where I solve problems. Real problems, not made-up ones.” A pause. “My teacher gives us logic puzzles, and I finish them super fast. Then I have to wait for everyone else. It's boring.”
“Have you tried making your own?” Gray asked.
Cassidy looked at him blankly. “What do you mean?”
“Solving a puzzle is one skill. Building one is another. It’s harder because you have to know all the possible solutions and design to account for all of them. If your teacher’s logic puzzles are too easy, try making one of your own. See if you can stump your teacher.”
Cassidy went still, her eyes alight with interest. She reached for her notebook and started writing.
Bonnie watched her daughter's face while she worked. Cassidy looked as if she’d just been handed the key to a lock she didn't know she had inside her.
“What's your favorite book?” Noah asked Gray. “What are you reading currently?”
“Currently I'm reading about fire behavior in different shapes of structures, which is really cool if you're me and boring if you're most other people.” He considered. “My favorite fiction book is Lonesome Dove.”
“I've read Lonesome Dove,” Cassidy said.
Bonnie stared at her daughter, stunned. “Lonesome Dove? When? Isn’t it, like 900 pages long?”
“At Christmas. Grandpa had it on his shelf. Yes, it's very long but it didn't feel long to read.” She looked at Gray. “I cried at the end.”
“Most people do,” Gray said gravely.
“Don't tell me how it ends,” Noah said immediately, covering his ears. “I'm going to read it when I'm old enough.”
“We won't tell,” Cassidy said.
Gray nodded in agreement.
Noah uncovered his ears. “Mom cries at commercials. Especially the ones with dogs that need rescuing.”
“Noah,” Bonnie said warningly.
“Those commercials are really sad. Anyone with a good heart is likely to cry watching them,” Gray commented. His eyes met Bonnie's over Noah's head with silent warmth. She looked away first.
She gathered the lunch wrappers with more focus than the task required. Outside, the sun struggled against a lead gray sky that hadn't fully committed to spring yet.
Noah moved on to a question about whether a shark could be crossed with a blue whale to get a giant shark-o-whale-osaur.
Gray launched into an explanation of how whales and sharks didn’t have the same number of genes because sharks were fish and whales were mammals, which made them even more incompatible for cross-breeding.