Thrill Me(58)
“Have you asked him about that?”
“He doesn’t stay in the room long enough for me to have a conversation with him.”
“How hard have you tried?”
Del was silent. Maya shook her head. “You’re such a guy. Maybe he needs to see you make a little effort. I don’t pretend to understand all your family dynamics, but what I can tell you is that people want to feel like they’re being heard. Maybe he needs to know you’re interested in listening to his side of things.”
Del nodded. “Maybe.” He looked at her. “Was I wrong to go?”
Not a question she was comfortable with, mostly because she felt responsible for what had happened. “You were young and hurt and feeling trapped. Leaving made sense.”
“I don’t think I would have been happy here. It was too easy to be somewhere else.”
“Anywhere else,” she corrected. “It’s not like you settled down at all. Some people like to be on the move. You’re one of them.” She came to a sudden stop. “It’s not my fault. You leaving. It would have happened anyway.”
He faced her. “Maya, it was never your fault. Did you think it was?”
“I’ve had guilt.”
“You shouldn’t. You didn’t want to marry me. That’s okay. You get to choose.”
They’d already been over what had happened. She’d apologized and he’d accepted her apology, so she wasn’t going to go there again. But this was an interesting twist on what they’d gone through.
“You wouldn’t have been happy married to me,” she said. “Not if it meant staying here. Wow, that would have been interesting.”
“Me bugging you to leave town? Would you have gone?”
“I don’t know.”
They started walking again.
“Because you want to be in one place,” he said.
“Why do you think that?”
“You moved to LA and never left. Now you’re here.”
“A lot of that was about my job.”
“I’m not saying it’s bad.” He motioned to the houses they passed. “Settling down is normal. I’m pointing out that you’ve never had a burning desire to see the world.”
She thought about her scrapbook. Were those actual dreams or just idle wishes? “Travel sounds fun,” she admitted. “To always be seeing new places. What’s your favorite part of going somewhere different?”
“Meeting the local kids. They’re curious about everything. Especially America.”
“Sure. They’ve seen snippets from TV shows and movies, but that’s not real. It’s too bad there’s not a way to share what things are really like. Sort of like those day-in-a-life documentaries, but geared for schoolkids. Here’s a school day for a regular kid in Baltimore. Here’s a school day for a regular kid in Melbourne. If they had the same format, students would get the rhythm of them right away. Know there was going to be a section on sports, or lunchtime. Children like repetition. It’s one of the reasons they like to hear the same story every night, to watch the same...”