“How about you, Olivia?”
“Liv,” she corrected, her tone managing to convey more annoyance than he thought her tiny frame was capable of holding.
“Sorry. Liv. What’d you do today?”
“School.”
Ah, okay, so it was to be a one-word-answer kind of interaction. He could work with that. Better than if she repeated back everything he said, which had been a popular way to annoy adults when he’d been a kid, and probably remained a standard for today’s youth.
“What classes are you taking?”
“We don’t have classes.”
Well, he sounded like an idiot, but it had earned him a four-word reply. He’d accept it. “Sorry, it’s been awhile since an old guy like me has been there. What did you learn today?”
Olivia chewed on her lip, a gesture he suspected she’d learned from Alice. “Multiplication.”
“Oh, man. I was the worst at math. I bet you’re good at it though.”
She looked him up and down once and turned to Alice. Her mother nodded and smiled, giving her whatever approval she needed to go ahead with the discussion. “I can do my worksheets faster than everyone else in class. Ms. Fisher says I’m pretty smart.” Catching herself bragging, Olivia blushed and added, “I guess.”
“Yeah, I figured you for being smart. Your mom is.”
Olivia’s face lightened a little when Alex complimented her mother. Some kids could go either way. He knew a few guys with the Felons who had kids, and he would rag on their dads to win them over. Your old man is so slow we’d need to get him rollerblades to get to first base and things like that. But a lot of kids had a blind sense of worship for their parents, and he liked those kids a lot. Olivia was apparently a big fan of her mother because much of the hostility faded out of her.
“Mom’s really smart. She taught me all the state capitals before I was even three,” Olivia bragged.
“Do you still remember them?”
“Yeah.” Her crossed arms dropped, and she bounced on her feet excitedly, suddenly much more like a young girl than a surly teen. “Ask me anything.”
“Sure. California.”
Olivia rolled her eyes. “Easy. Sacramento.”
“Okay, let’s try another one. Ummm, okay, my home state. Georgia.”
“Atlanta.”
“Home of the Braves,” Alex said.
“Ugh.” She stuck her tongue out, and Alex couldn’t help but laugh. Tact wasn’t one of Olivia’s strengths, but she definitely wasn’t afraid to be honest.
“Oh, I’ve got a good one. Delaware.”
Olivia opened her mouth to reply, then stopped, her features drawn uncertainly. She closed her mouth, her lips pinched in a serious expression while she tried to come up with the answer. She finally looked to her mother with wide, imploring eyes. Alice leaned over and stage whispered, “It rhymes with Grover.”
“Oh. Oh. Dover.”
Alex held his hand out. “Good job.”
Olivia smacked his palm for the cutest high-five he’d ever gotten. Her barriers had been easy to break down. Easier than he’d dared hope. Now he had to hope her mother would learn to like him with such little effort.
“Well, come on. Best not leave you girls standing out here all night. Follow me.” He turned his back on them, sad to do it because of how good Alice looked, but not prepared to accidentally walk into a door, either.
They walked through the interior of the park complex and down a flight of stairs to the lower level, where a security guard was waiting to give them access to the field. Seeing a uniform, Olivia immediately grew quiet, watching the older man with wide eyes. Alex wished his own uniform commanded that much awe from her.
Out on the field, though, her mouth fell slack, and he knew he’d dazzled her a little. It was one thing to see a baseball stadium from the seats, quite another to be out on the grass. The field looked huge from the ground level, even in a minor-league park. The seats seemed to rise up like the arena seating of a Roman theatre, and it was easy to feel very, very small from the ground level.
“Wow,” Olivia said, her head tilted so far back he thought she might fall backwards.
“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” He stood next to her, gazing up and trying to see it the way he might have at her age. “You should see the big parks. Like mine in San Francisco. It makes this look like a little league field.”
“For real?”
“Yeah, they’re a lot bigger.”
“Cool.” She wasn’t yet at an age where it was necessary to hate everything adults liked. She still thought her mom hung the moon, and apparently was enough of a tomboy that a baseball diamond could impress her. Alex was relieved, because his only other idea had been taking them to Disney. Not only did he not want to make that drive, he also wasn’t sure he could stand waiting in so many lines in one day.