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CHAPTER THIRTY

The Father

Somehow in the middle of all of this came my opportunity to meet Summer’s dad. The timing wasn’t her fault; it was the only night he was in town and was free. I held no illusions about how the words No, I’m too busy with work right now would be received, so I agreed. Besides, I did need something to keep my mind off Greaves and the DOD contract for a bit.

Summer rolled up the circle drive in front of my condo to pick me up. She had the actual doors on her Jeep, which was unusual. I opened the passenger side and climbed in. “Hey.”

She leaned over to kiss me. “Hey.”

“You look cute,” I told her. I was being honest—the black-and-white summer dress looked good on her—but the outfit represented a deviation from the Summer Bryn fashion playbook of shorts, tank top, and strappy sandals. This seemed more formal, like something she might wear to a wedding.

Or a funeral, came the unbidden thought.

“Thanks.” She couldn’t entirely hide the nerves from her voice. “Are you ready for this?”

“I can’t wait,” I said. For this to be over.

I didn’t have the best record when it came to the whole meet-the-parents ritual. The only other time I’d experienced it was a couple of years ago when I was with Jane, my last serious girlfriend and Summer’s former roommate.

Jane’s family was from Bullhead City in northwest Arizona. Obviously my mom and brother lived in town, but she was completely preoccupied with Connor’s worsening condition. Connor had met Jane once or twice, of course, but that was as far as family introductions went. Things changed over the summer; Jane went home to Bullhead City. Two and a half months was a long time to be apart, and sure, we were fairly serious, so we decided that I’d come for a visit.

Her family lived out in the sticks. There’s no other way to put it. I knew that about her from pretty much the moment we met; the small-town kids came to school with a bit of a twang and a bit of that bright-eyed so this is a real city look on their faces. Jane had told me stories, but having grown up in the suburbs I truly had no idea what I was in for when I drove to her parents’ house. Single-lane gravel roads. Miles of wind and solar farms. And worst of all, spotty cell phone coverage. Still, she was my girlfriend so I did my best to show up and be polite.

Her parents were perfectly nice, too. They invited me in—I’d be staying with them for two days—and gave off nothing but relaxed, welcoming vibes. I was still nervous as hell, though. Maybe because of the arduous drive in my jalopy of a car, or maybe because I had no experience on how to interact with a girlfriend’s parents.

So I talked.

I talked a lot.

In the back of my mind I was slightly aware that no one else had gotten a word in edgewise since I’d come inside, but still. I kept telling stories and remarking on what I’d seen on my drive to their place. Telling them all about the jalopy and its quirks. Giving a far-too-detailed summary of my research.

Jane said that after I’d left to return to suburbia, her parents had looked at each other, then at her, and said Well, he sure is a talker! Needless to say, my relationship with Jane did not withstand the test of time. That wasn’t purely because of my failure to impress her parents. Even so, the idea of that first impression with the parents holding significance for the future of a relationship stuck with me ever since. The irony of it all was that Summer and I hated each other back then. It still amazed me how much that had changed.

“How much have you told your dad about me?” I asked.

“Nothing. He has no idea you exist, or that you’re coming to this dinner.”

“What?”

“I’m kidding, Noah.”

This had to go well. Summer and her dad were really close. In fact, part of me wondered if she’d waited this long to make introductions because she wasn’t sure we had staying power as a couple. Even so, if her dad hated me for some reason, it did put our relationship in jeopardy. Sure, she only saw him once every few months, but they talked all the time. Come to think of it, I had no idea how much she’d told him so far. “He doesn’t know about the whole me-being-a-jerk-to-you when I was with Jane, right?”

“No, I told him that was a different Noah who died.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. “How did he die?”

“Horrifically,” she said.

We pulled in to the parking lot of Smokey Joe’s—a barbecue place, which Summer said was her dad’s favorite—and found the lot reasonably crowded for a weeknight. We smelled the mesquite smoke before we turned off the road. It smelled good and my stomach rumbled; I hadn’t eaten much all day.

For the first time that I could remember, Summer followed the directional flow of traffic into the lot and parked in a legitimate, marked spot. And looking at the clock, I noticed that we’d only barely arrived on time. In fact, we might even be a minute late. I looked at her sidelong.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.” You’re just a totally different person right now, that’s all.

We held hands on the walk to the restaurant door. That’s all I could focus on: the door. Summer squeezed my hand tight, almost to the point of uncomfortable. At least I wasn’t the only one who was nervous.

We walked in to find a small, rustic waiting room. It was barbecue-joint classic decor inside: pinewood flooring and dark wood panels plastered with years-old cookout posters. The man waiting in the corner matched the environment well. He wore a denim jacket, jeans, and leather boots like a cowboy on his day off. And maybe it was the lighting or my imagination, but his beard was the exact same color as Summer’s hair.

“Hi, Daddy!” Summer hugged him and then turned toward me. “This is Noah.”

I smiled in what I hoped was a friendly way. “Nice to meet you.”

“Same.” He offered his hand, and we shook. Firm handshake. His hand was rough—no surprise there—and I’m sure mine felt soft by comparison. “Heard a lot about you.”

“Oh.” I raised my eyebrows and looked at Summer, but learned nothing from her face. “All good things, I hope.”

“Mostly.”

Uh-oh. I didn’t really know what to say to that.

The hostess rescued me. “Your table’s ready.”

“Lead on.” Her dad followed, his boots clicking audibly on the floor.

I looked at Summer and mouthed Mostly? She took my hand and dragged me after him.

The hostess took us to a booth because it seemed the universe really wanted to torment me. Summer’s dad slid into one side, I slid into the other, and that left her to choose between sitting next to her dad or her boyfriend. After an almost-imperceptible hesitation, she slid in next to me. Small victories. This brought a momentary frown to her dad’s face, and it looked like I’d be starting even deeper in the hole, points-wise.

Don’t talk too much, I reminded myself. It seemed like asking some questions was a good start in that regard. “So, what brings you to town?”

“There’s a hearing about opening up new leases for copper mining.”

“Whereabouts?”

“In Gila county, which is already home to some of the biggest copper mines in the country.”

“I see. And, uh, which side are you on?”

Her dad’s eyes widened, but Summer laughed, and I held up my hands. “I’m joking. I know what side you’re on. So, what do they want?”

“The usual: an open pit mine, no restrictions, no third-party environmental studies.”

“I’m sure they did some environmental studies,” I said tentatively.

Summer snorted in her way that said You’re so naive.

“Yeah, they did their own,” her dad said. “A sponsored study by a research group that has no independent funding.”

“Which found, of course, that the environmental impact would be minimal,” Summer added.

“Hey now, independent grant funding is virtually impossible to get,” I said. I’d experienced some of that when I was in Dr. Sato’s lab during graduate school. The NIH was funding grants at the four percent level back then, and it had only gone down. “Maybe the independent group is legit, but they need the sponsor funds to survive.”

“That’s a fair point,” her dad conceded.

One point for me.

“Then again, they’ve done thirteen environmental impact studies in the past four years,” he said. “Every single one of them came up with minimal impact.”

“Oh.” I was all for defending researchers because I considered myself one, but that figure was pretty damning if it was true. “Yikes.”

“Yeah. Yikes.”

“So, you said they wanted open pit mining,” I said. “Is that as bad as it sounds for the environment?”

“More.”

“Why can’t they make it a closed mine?”

“Oh, they can.”

“But it’s a lot cheaper to run an open-pit mine,” Summer said.

Jeez. The thing was, copper was super valuable and always in high demand—I knew that because we needed it for components of both the God Machine and our computing servers. I hated to admit it, but the crunchy tag team of Summer and her dad was starting to get to me.

The server came to take our order. Summer, of course, found some kind of a braised salmon dish and ordered that with fresh-steamed vegetables. She had a habit of making me feel bad about my meal choices. Hell, I didn’t even know they served any seafood dishes at Smokey Joe’s. But I rarely got to come here and I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to eat real meat.

“Do you have burnt ends?” I asked. These were pork tenderloin tips charred to perfection—a specialty of the restaurant but they often ran out.

“I’ll check with the kitchen, but I think so,” the server said.

“I’ll have that with . . .” I trailed off as I noticed Summer’s side-glare, which told me that if I ordered the cheese-bacon fries, I was a dead man. “Loaded baked potato, and green beans.”

Summer looked a tad less murder-y. “I thought we were trying to get away from meat.” Her tone was chiding, not angry, so it seemed I’d get away with this one.

“It’s too good to pass up,” I said.

“You know what, that sounds good,” her dad said. “I’ll have the same.”

“Dad!” Summer looked aghast.

What a baller move. Surprising, sure, from the devoted environmental activist, but a baller move.

“Noah says it’s good. Seems like I should put that to the test.”

Oh, fantastic. Now my reputation was on the line for a food order that I had no idea he’d duplicate. The thing about burnt ends was that they were kind of an acquired taste. If you liked seasoned meat with a charred flavor, then you were in heaven. On the other hand, if you didn’t go for that savory combination, burnt ends were pretty much inedible to you. “Well, this should be interesting,” I muttered.

“So, Summer tells me you work in biotech,” her dad said.

“Yes, I work at . . .” I hesitated. “Just, uh, a company in Scottsdale.”

Summer rolled her eyes.

“This company have a name?” her dad asked.

“If I tell you, are there going to be protesters out front next week?”

“That depends. Your company doing anything wrong?”

“Well, we’re not strip-mining anything if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I hope not,” he said. All serious.

I swallowed. “The company is Build-A-Dragon. I work for Evelyn Chang, who just became the CEO. She’s as ethical as they come.”

“What happened to the old CEO?”

“He, um, left.” After the board fired him.

“Dad, I told you that, remember?” Summer lowered her voice. “The dog thing?”

I gasped softly and hissed, “You told him?”

“Of course.” She shrugged, like it wasn’t a bit deal. Like we hadn’t signed mountains of nondisclosure agreements explicitly forbidding us from telling anyone what really happened.

Her dad cleared his throat. “There’s one part about that incident that I don’t understand.”

“Okay . . .”

“Why’d you let the animals out?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your whole company existed to fill the roles that dogs couldn’t. So why bring them back?’

It was a fair question, and not the first time I’d been asked it, either. Or asked it of myself. But the fact was, in the moment when it happened, I hadn’t even considered helping Robert Greaves keep his dirty secret. “It was the right thing to do.”

He nodded, whether in agreement or understanding, I couldn’t be sure.

“Also, that guy was a total ass,” Summer said.

“Summer.” Stern dad brought the tone.

“Yeah, Summer, watch the language,” I deadpanned. It earned me a kick in the shins but was worth the color that rose to her cheeks.

“I don’t know where she gets the swearing from,” her dad told me, almost in apology.

I shrugged. “I actually think she’s toning it down a bit because you’re here. Ow!”

“What?”

“Sorry, I just hit my shin on something.”

The food arrived soon after that. The burnt ends announced their arrival with their unique aroma, somehow savory and mesquite at the same time. They looked good. So did Summer’s salmon dish, in fairness.

“I can’t believe you ordered fish in a barbecue place, but that looks pretty amazing,” I told her. Hell, maybe I should try it sometime. But my real focus was on the burnt ends, my plate and her dad’s. Smokey Joe’s had never let me down before, but this was a finicky preparation, and the fact that they hadn’t run out of them already had me worried. I couldn’t make myself eat first.

“So the name burnt ends is not an exaggeration,” her dad said.

“I know they don’t look like much, but give them a try.”

He stabbed a big chunk of meat with the tip of his steak knife and popped it into his mouth.

“Now who’s got bad manners?” Summer mumbled. But I was watching her dad’s reaction to the food. It seemed strange to think that our whole meeting hinged on that single moment. His forehead smoothed out a bit, and his eyebrows shot up in an expression so like Summer that it threw me a little. But I knew the meaning of it and felt a surge of hope.

“What do you think, Mr. Bryn?” I asked.

He chewed for a moment, then stabbed another piece. With the fork this time. “Not bad, Noah. And you can call me Paul.”

After that, the rest of the evening cruised by. Her dad—Paul, as I was supposed to call him—refused my offer to pay and took the bill himself. He was a generous tipper, too. He shook my hand when we said goodbye and said it was good to meet me. Also, not for nothing, but he let me actually leave the restaurant in his daughter’s Jeep, which said something.

A couple of hours later, her phone beeped. We were lying in bed at my condo, speculating about what the dragonets were doing based on the noises that filtered through my closed bedroom door. Summer’s phone buzzed. Over my protests she wiggled over to pick it up from the nightstand.

“Oh, I missed a call from my dad,” she said.

“That’s strange. What would you have been doing to miss a call from him?” I slid my hand up her side.

She swatted it away. “Hush, you. He left a voice mail.”

She played it, and even though her phone wasn’t on speakerphone, I could make out most of the words.

“I really liked Noah . . . seems like a good guy.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“I’m not allowed to see you anymore,” she said, as if I couldn’t see the big smile on her face.

“Well, I guess this makes it our last night together.” I grabbed her and tickled her.

“Stop!” She laughed and grabbed my hands. “He said you’re a big corporate sellout.”

I tickled her with renewed effort. “Are you sure?”

She squealed. “Stop it! All right, he liked you, okay?”

I relented finally and pulled her close to me. “I’m glad. I like him, too.”


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Framed