Free Trace (TraceWorld Book 1) by Letitia L. Moffitt Page B

Sometimes her mother smiled. Sometimes the smile even seemed connected to what he was saying. Most times, though, she seemed to be reacting to a private joke of her own—a joke he wasn’t in on. Her husband knew when this happened. After a while he stopped making it happen.
    Nola finished her omelet and coffee. She’d finished her information-gathering as well, and once again she experienced one of those moments in which she realized she had almost nothing to say to this person, one of two people who had known her all her life. Neither of her parents had the vaguest idea what her job was like, who her friends were, whom she dated, or even if she dated, and Nola felt no compulsion to change any of that. This happened to a lot of people, she knew, but it still saddened her unexpectedly. Even if they didn’t have personal conversations, couldn’t they once in a while have serious ones?
    “Dad, are you afraid of death?”
    Not surprisingly, her father answered without hesitation, as if she’d asked his prediction for the Super Bowl. “You know, the older I get, the more tired I get and the more I just want to lie down and not get up again no matter how noisy it gets around me. Nope, death doesn’t scare me. I could use the sleep. Same time, I’m not looking to go down just yet. When I do, though, Nola darlin’, all this is yours.” He gestured to the cheap DIY furniture with a bark of a laugh.
    Nola laughed, too. So much for serious. “Thanks for the meal,” she said, getting up.
    “Thanks for the book. And the company. You get prettier all the time,” he said, giving her a loud kiss on the forehead the way he used to when she was five.
    “You, too, pretty boy.”
    “I have to beat ’em off with a tire iron.” He saw her out the door with a wink.
    Nola knew her father would go back to his eggs and his book and it would be just like any other night for him, whether his daughter had been around to see him or not. She was well beyond the age of ignorance about the fact that her parents lived large portions of their lives completely unconnected to her, but it did sadden her just a little that here was one more person in Nola’s life who would always remain at a distance. It was starting to seem like everyone she knew fell into that category.
    As she pulled out of the parking lot, she thought about Grayson Bryant again. Sometimes she thought it was better to keep people at a distance, but if she really believed that, she wouldn’t have accepted Grayson’s offer.
    She had accepted it. And that meant she had another strange meal coming her way tomorrow night.

 
     
     
     
     
    7
     
    There were times when the mindlessness of her job was depressing as hell. Court transcription required her to shut off her brain entirely and reduce herself to ears and fingers. Whenever people remarked, either sincerely or just to be polite, that she must have some great stories about interesting court cases, she had to admit that she hardly remembered anything most of the time. One day soon, voice recognition software would be sophisticated enough to replace her entirely, and though she’d be jobless at that point with years of irrelevant work experience, she doubted she’d feel terribly bereft. Today, though, the mindlessness was welcome. She didn’t want to have to think, because the only thing on her mind was seeing Grayson that evening.
    When evening finally came, they met at Fuji Sushi, a popular restaurant downtown. She had insisted on driving there by herself, a decision he had accepted with a shrug and a rather infuriating smile, as if he found her mistrust delightfully naïve. She had been instructed not to get a table if she arrived first but rather to wait for him outside, though as she pulled into the parking lot she could see he was already there.
    “This is a private dinner, by invitation only,” he said by way of explanation. “And believe it or not, there’s a special door we have to enter around the