Smoke & Mirrors
Page 32
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “How much will it cost?”
“My treat.”
“No shit? Thanks. That is so sick.”
“Sick?”
“Sick as in cool.”
“Who’s your mother’s favorite driver?”
“I dunno. I can find out.” She ran the wheels back and forth on her lap and made a motor noise as she did this. “Is this you on the card?” she asked, meaning the note card he’d given her. “Ward McCarty. That’s you?”
“It is,” he told her.
“Why were you in Vegas?” she asked. “Gambling?”
“No. Work stuff. You?”
“I fly back and forth a lot,” she said. “My dad lives there, and I live with my mother in Charlotte. You married?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your wife do?”
“She’s a pediatric surgeon,” Ward said.
“What’s that mean?”
“Pediatric means children,” Ward said.
“I know that. So she, like, cuts little kids open?” Her eyes were wide, her mouth a circle.
“Yes, but I think it’s more complicated than making cuts.”
“Y’all got any kids?”
“No,” he said.
“You’re, like, too old?”
“I expect you’re right,” he said, trying to smile. This wasn’t true…as far as he knew.
When she handed the car back, Ward put it back in his briefcase, closed it, and placed it under the seat.
“I need to slip out past you,” he told her.
“Why?” she asked.
“Visit the little boys’ room.”
After the man beside the girl unbuckled his seat belt and stood in the aisle, she tucked her feet up in her seat so he could get out.
When Ward returned to his row, the girl, who was now listening to her iPod, smiled up at him and pulled up her feet to let him get into his seat.
When the plane landed ten minutes later and parked at the terminal, the girl grabbed her bag of toys and was off the plane before Ward got his carry-on and filed out.
He thought about what the girl had said about him being too old to have children, and realized it wasn’t true. He and Natasha hadn’t talked about having another child since Barney’s accident, and the thought comforted him. For the first time in a very long time, Ward McCarty felt a degree of optimism about the future.
ALSO BY JOHN RAMSEY MILLER
Too Far Gone
Side by Side
Upside Down
Inside Out
The Last Family
Available from Bantam Dell
SMOKE & MIRRORS
A Dell Book/April 2008
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by John Ramsey Miller
* * *
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
* * *
www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33753-9
v3.0