She didn’t wait for any affirmation from Tox as she plowed on. “You’d think the advantage of having two madly in love parents who only have eyes for each other would be that I could do what I wanted, but they are surprisingly overprotective. My dad worked for the government, so he probably saw a lot of messed up stuff. We had security cameras, bodyguards. I couldn’t use social media. I didn’t go to the local school, so I didn’t really have any friends. For my twelfth birthday party, I invited our cook, Frieda, my French tutor Lyse, and our mailman, Carlito.
“That story has a happy ending though. Frieda and Carlito started seeing each other after that. They got married six months later.” She gave a frustrated sigh. “I sound self-involved.” She looked at him then, her expression serious. “If I could start that story over, I would say I have loving parents who are a little too concerned with my safety. There. That sounded so much saner.”
“I understand. You shouldn’t cage a hummingbird.”
“Yes. That’s it exactly.”
“I know this will come as a shock,” Tox’s sarcasm evident, “but no one really paid attention to anything I did.”
“Why?”
“My folks died when I was young. My twin brother and I lived with my grandmother until she died. Then we went into the system. Pretty much self-parenting for me.”
“You’re a twin? Someone gave birth to two of you? At the same time?”
“Well, I was smaller back then.”
“Sorry to interrupt. Keep going with your story.”
“My twin brother and I got separated in foster care. Then he died in a house fire when we were twelve. So…”
With his forearms on his thighs, hands dangling, he stared at his feet. The air was wet with the coming storm.
Seeming to sense his reticence, she took the ball. “So, when I turned eighteen, my dad knew I was going to venture out on my own. We figured out a solution that made us both happy.”
“What was that?”
“My dad has a lot of connections from his work. He made some calls and gave me some options. I started off as an intern with an event planner in Antwerp. After that…let’s see. I worked at a ski lodge in Verbier. Oh, I apprenticed with a landscape architect in Budapest.”
“Anything strike your fancy?”
“Not so far. I mean I love learning about all that stuff, but nothing so much that I would commit a career to it. My dad says I flit. Too bad I can’t make a career out of flitting.”
She tugged on her earlobe then changed the subject.
“I’m sorry about your brother. What was his name?”
“Miles.”
“Miller and Miles. Cute.”
“He was the cute one, the charmer. Always getting us in trouble, then always getting us out of it.” He smiled at the memory. “I didn’t speak until I was four, because Miles always did the talking.” She noticed he did that thing with his lips again. “Sorry.”
“Why?”
“TMI.”
“Honesty.” Calliope stood. “Want to climb a tree?”
“What?”
“That tree over there, it’s practically begging to be climbed.”
“Um, sure,” Tox said.
“I studied with this really ground-breaking guru in Thimphu.”
“You lived in Bhutan?”