She smiled as she handed it back to him a moment later. “There’s a very strong resemblance between the two of you. He’s very handsome. So, he was a truck driver?”
Thomas nodded as he carefully—almost lovingly—refolded the paper. “He hauled steel and lumber.”
“Did he work for your adoptive father?”
“Yeah.”
“I was wondering about that. I was never really sure how you ended up with the Carlisles ...” Sophie let her voice trail off, hoping he’d fill in the rest.
“Joseph took me in after my parents were killed. He’s the kind of man who feels a lot of responsibility for the men who work for him and their families.”
“But what about your parents’ families? You mentioned that your mother grew up in Morgan Park?”
“Yeah, but my grandparents both died before I was eight. My mom was an only child.”
“And your father’s family?”
He shrugged. “He was an orphan. Like me. He ran away from the orphanage when he was thirteen, and he worked every day of his life after that.”
He tipped his wallet to carefully reinsert the fragile newspaper clipping. A gold object slipped out of one of the leather folds.
“What’s that?” Sophie asked, peering closer when Thomas caught it in his hand and opened his palm.
“It’s a ‘crab,’ my Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal badge,” Thomas murmured. He ran a fingertip over the wreath and the star of the insignia before he reinserted it into the fold and put away his wallet.
“You mean like . . . dismantling bombs?”
“Yeah, in part. Only if we could do it securely. If we couldn’t dismantle them, we’d detonate them safely. That was the fun part,” he told her with a sideways amused glance.
“It must have been very dangerous work,” Sophie said as they resumed walking. “Whatever made you decide to join a bomb squad?”
“I was a daredevil when I was a kid. Bit of an idiot, really.” When he noticed her wry expression he smiled. “I liked the challenge. It’s a difficult unit to get into. Besides . . . I wanted to play with all those cool disarming robots and high-tech toys.”
“But to have to disarm a bomb,” she said, the thought of it making her shiver.
“Disarming was only a small part of the job. We were usually searching and securing areas. It was a rarity to have to actually suit up and go down on a bomb.”
She glanced over at him sharply. His smile faded, and she knew he’d also thought of what he’d said to her earlier while he was so agitated in the kitchen.
“I’m sorry I said that. I was upset,” he said. “Foul things tend to come out of your mouth when you’re riled up and have a history of working with a bunch of guys who don’t even remember how to talk anything but dirty.”
She nodded and they continued to walk in thoughtful silence.
“Sophie?” Thomas asked after a minute.
“Yes?”
“How did you know I grew up in Morgan Park?”
His abrupt question startled her. “I . . . what do you mean?”
He nodded his head in the direction of the Dolans’ house. “Before we met up with Daisy back there, you mentioned that Daisy and Sherman had grown up in Beverly. You said it like you knew I’d grown up in Morgan Pa
rk; like you were trying to supply me with some common background to help ease things with the Dolans.”
Her mouth hung open. “I . . . I must have heard it somewhere . . . back at the office.”
“Who would be talking about where I grew up as a kid at the office? You and I didn’t even know each other that well until recently.”