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“That’s too bad. I really wanted to hear what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I told him. It was worth a shot.
“I can hear it in your voice, little one.”
I took a calming breath to keep from blowing up. “I’m not little anymore.”
“You’ll always be my little sister, and I’ll always take care of you.”
“Fine. When I have twins, you can come over and be in charge of diaper changing.”
“Are you pregnant?”
“Get real. What are you in town for anyway?”
He hesitated. “Customer meetings.” The intonation of the answer wasn’t the usual confident Dennis, and earlier he’d told me it was a customer meeting, not multiple.
“What are you hiding?”
He ignored my query. “Don’t you want to tell me what’s bothering you?”
“What’s bothering me is that you won’t tell me about your new girlfriend.”
That got him to stop the attack for a moment. “How about if I stay another day and we do dinner tomorrow?”
I didn’t even try to make up an excuse for tomorrow. “I’m busy.”
“I get it. You don’t want to talk to your brother.”
“That guilt trip doesn’t work on me. I’m glad you finally have someone in your life. Call back when you’re ready to tell me about her.”
He ignored my jab. “If not dinner, how about breakfast tomorrow?”
“And you’ll tell me about her?”
He didn’t respond to that. Pestering him about his girlfriend finally did the trick, and we got off the phone without another request to meet him before he left town.
What was it with guys anyway? Dennis refused to talk about the new flame he obviously had. He hadn’t even attempted to deny it.
* * *
Later that afternoon,Mr. Heiden called several of us into his office.
“Inventory assignments,” he told us, handing us each a sheet of paper. “We’re working Natural History tomorrow. No sick calls, and be on time. We need all the positions manned.” He used the wordmanned, even though we were mostly women here, but only Kirby had ever objected.
I checked the sheet. I was covering the employee entrance.
Heiden sat back down. “The facility will be closed to the public, and we need to keep this to a single day.”
Several of us nodded, but nobody said anything.
“Benson, a word.”
That was Heiden-speak for the others to leave, which they did.
He pointed at the chair.
I took the seat, unaware of what I might have done.
