Page 54 of Crash Course
"Not a bother at all. We don't meet celebrities around here."
"Well, thank you. But I’m hardly a celebrity." She peered down at Brittney. "Your mom said you’re trying to decide what to be when you get older. I enjoy being an attorney. It’s hard sometimes, but I love the law."
"Maybe I’ll be a lawyer. Or a judge!"
"That would be terrific." Cilla turned to Sherry, her internal warning system raging.Too bad.
"If you’re ever in Charlotte and want to come by, I could show Brittney my office. Or maybe you could come to court one day and watch."
Brittney gasped. "No way."
"Wow," Jake said. "That’s some offer. Thank you."
"Can we do it, Daddy? Please?"
Jake looked down at Sherry, the two of them exchanging a look that Cilla, not having kids, didn’t exactly understand, but reminded her of her childhood, right before her parents told her they’d be splitting up and mom moving overseas. That look? It screamed of pain.
Sadness and doubt.
"We’ll talk about it," Sherry said. "Maybe after this round of chemo. Thank you. That’s a wonderful offer."
They said their goodbyes and Cilla and Cruz headed back to the truck, buckling in while Brittney, Sherry, and Jake made their way back inside.
"Too bad about the kid," he said.
But Cilla had nothing. Not one word. Her frantic brain couldn’t contain them long enough to conjure a sentence.
PFOA in the ground. Daughter with cancer.
They had to know. Didn’t they? That their property was contaminated? According to her father, who called this family out of the blue to check on them, the PFOA levels were fine. Which in itself was a load of crap because when would PFOA ever be fine?
Dadhadto know. The man wasn’t stupid. That one test, false-positive or not, had to have given him pause.
But he’d explained it away. Whether for his own benefit or hers, he’d minimized it. Someone on his staff might be shielding him. Paul probably, since he handled real estate transactions.
In which case, did they also know Brittney had cancer? Real estate transactions didn’t exactly contain health histories of the occupants.
Mind reeling, she peered back at the house. "Cancer," she said. "How is that fair to a kid?"
"It’s not."
Dragging her gaze from the now-empty porch, she met Cruz’s eye. "This is a farm. They probably grow their own vegetables."
"Probably an accurate assumption."
"Are you thinking what I’m thinking?"
"Well, sugar, if you’re thinking these people eat food they grow in soil saturated with toxic chemicals and now their daughter has cancer, yes."
She braced her hands against the doorframe and dipped her head. She’d offered her father legal advice plenty of times. More times than she’d preferred. And wasn’t that part of the problem? The reason she was shopping for an office in Asheville? She needed space. Needed Dad to stop constantly strolling in, disrupting her day, when he felt like it.
Yes, she’d always be grateful that he’d paid for her education and given her a suite of offices in his company’s Charlotte headquarters. But lately, who truly benefited from that generosity? With the number of times he called on her for legal advice, she might as well be his in-house counsel.
That irritated her. Made her feel . . .
Used.
And now this farm and a little girl with cancer. Him calling to check on them. He had to know about her.
