01_The Best Gift by Irene Hannon Page B

something—answers. Starting with how she had managed to create a better rapport with his parents in the first thirty minutes of their visit than he had in thirty years of life.
    “Well, go ahead and make yourself comfortable. I’m just going to blow out the candles on the table and put away the perishables. Then I’ll join you.”
    When A.J. returned, cradling a mug of tea, Blake had claimed one of the side chairs. She sat at right angles to him on the couch, but he noted that she was careful not to tuck her leg under her this time. She’d mentioned the intestinal parasite. But had she been injured in some other way in Afghanistan that she hadn’t shared? Or was the leg injury more recent?
    “Your parents are great, Blake,” she said, forcing him to refocus his thoughts.
    “I’m glad you think so.”
    She looked at him curiously. “Obviously you don’t.”
    “I didn’t exactly have an ideal childhood.”
    “By ideal do you mean typical? Or perfect?”
    “It was neither.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    He shrugged. “You’ve met my parents. And you’re good at that mind-reading game you were playing earlier. I’m sure you can put two and two together.”
    Thoughtfully she took a sip of her tea. “I have a feeling your parents might have been hippies in their younger days.”
    “Give the lady a gold star.”
    At his sarcastic tone she tilted her head and looked at him. When she spoke, there was no censure in her tone. “Is that a bad thing? Were they into the drugs-and-free-sex scene?”
    “No. But they were always fighting for some cause. Attending rallies, going on marches, the whole nine yards. Or they were trying out alternative lifestyles. We even spent one summer in a commune. You know how most people think of a certain place when they hear the word home? I don’t. We were never in one place long enough.”
    “I guess I’ve always thought of home not so much as a place, but as simply being with the people you love,” A.J. said mildly, without reproach.
    “That’s easy to say if you weren’t the one uprooted every few months.” There was bitterness in his voice now. And anger, simmering just below the surface. As if it had been there a long time. “I was in a new school practically every year—sometimes twice a year. I was never in one place long enough to make friends. To join the Boy Scouts. To play on a soccer team. It’s a pretty lonely life for a kid.”
    And for the adult that kid became, she thought. The effects of his isolated childhood were clearly evident in the man across from her.
    “But your parents seem to love you,” she pointed out.
    He sighed. “They do, in their own way. But I think I was very unplanned, and they just decided early on that my arrival wasn’t going to put a crimp in their lifestyle. So they dragged me all over the country with them. They picked up odd jobs wherever they went, but it was always hit or miss. They had an easy-come, easy-go attitude that seemed to suit them. I was always the one who worried about whether we’d have enough food on the table. Or a place to spend the night. Even as a little kid.”
    “Did you? Have enough food, and a place to spend the night, I mean.”
    He thought about the time they’d almost gone to a homeless shelter, but at the last minute his dad had found work. “Yes. But it was always feast or famine, depending on whether my parents were working. I never knew where our next meal was coming from. Or where I’d be sleeping. And I hated that.”
    Which explained a lot, A.J. thought. Now she better understood Blake’s dislike of change, his need for predictability. “So how did you meet Aunt Jo?”
    His face relaxed, and a slight smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “We were in St. Louis one summer, right after Jo opened the shop. I don’t even remember why we were there. Anyway, she hired Dad to do some work. I went with him every day, and she sort of took me under her wing. For that one summer at least, there