Page 38 of Paradigm

Stella laughed a little and said, “True. So, are you and Eline back together or dating again? I didn’t want to ask out there.”

“No, we’re reconnecting, I think. It’s a process.”

“A process heading toward something?”

“I don’t know, Stella. Why don’t you go out there and get your girlfriend out of my damn house so that I can see?”

Stella pulled open the door and said, “After you, I guess.”

Arlowe walked out and hurried down the hall, but she heard laughter coming from the kitchen. She could tell Violet and Enya were laughing, but it was Eline’s laughter that had her stopping in the hallway to take it all in.

“I love Vi’s laugh, too,” Stella whispered. “I think it’s a process heading toward something,” she added and walked around Arlowe. “Babe, I’m going to be late for work if we don’t finish up soon.”

“You’re the one who had to go to the bathroom and still needs to finish her pancakes,” Violet replied.

“Yes, dear,” Stella said. “I love you.”

Arlowe walked in and watched Stella lean down and kiss Violet on the lips.

“I love you, too,” Violet replied, looking a bit confused.

As Stella moved to sit down, Violet looked over at Arlowe, who gave her an expression that said she had no idea what that had been about.

“I should get going as well,” Eline stated after wiping her mouth with her napkin. “I need to get home to shower and change for work, but thank you all for breakfast. It was so nice catching up a little.”

“Yeah, for us, too. Come by any time,” Enya suggested.

“I’ll walk you out,” Arlowe offered.

“That’s okay. Finish eating your breakfast.” Eline stood up and walked over to her. “Can I text you later? Maybe after my very long nap?”

Arlowe smiled at her and said, “Definitely.”

CHAPTER 12

Eline finished what she needed to do for the day, and at six o’clock, she could finally go home. It felt like she hadn’t slept in years, when, in reality, she’d only stayed up one night. She used to be able to stay up for hours and sometimes even days on end, catching a couple of hours of sleep while something on her computer ran in the background, and then she’d get up and get to it all over again. Now, though, she was in her thirties, and those days appeared to be behind her because she’d hardly been able to keep her eyes open through most of the day, and for lunch, she’d gone to the parking lot to try to nap in her car. She’d gotten about twenty minutes of sleep, which had helped propel her through the rest of the day, but she wasn’t sure what had happened in that two o’clock meeting where she’d agreed to whatever her boss had said, and she hoped that wouldn’t come back to bite her in the ass later.

After packing her things, she decided to stop for something to eat on the way home because she was in no condition to cook. Eline barely felt like she should be driving, but she didn’t live far from the office, and she turned the music up in the car to help her stay focused on the road. Having grabbed food from a local burger place, she snagged a couple of fries from the bag and thought about home. She knew she’d get homesick. She had been missing her friends and family more than Holland itself, but these fries were not as good as the ones she could’ve picked up from a stand on her way home from work, and that had her missing the place itself, too.

She ate when she got home, took a shower, which she’d thought would help her sleep better, and considered going to bed, but it was just after seven. If she fell asleep now, she’d wake up too early and would probably end up in this same mess tomorrow, so she decided to take a chance. Knowing her father, he’d still be awake, despite it being the middle of the night there. Her mother would probably be asleep in their bed, but he would be up and in his small office space off the kitchen, working. Just in case she was wrong, though, Eline figured she’d text before calling, and if he didn’t reply, she’d put something on TV and get a little more work done. When he had replied shortly after, she dialed his number and put her phone to her ear.

“Hi, Dad,” she greeted in English when he answered with a little grunt. “Going well, I see?”

When she’d first told her parents about the job, they’d insisted on speaking to her only in English for months leading up to her move. As academics, they seemed to understand that she would need daily practice and real conversation, since the only time she got to use her English outside of that was when tourists asked her for directions, and even then, it had barely happened nowadays because everyone had their phones and could look things up themselves.

“I’m having a problem with a section.”

Her father was a renowned applied mathematician and, for the past ten years, he’d been working at the same university where Eline had once met Arlowe. Prior to that, he had worked at a different Holland university as well as with the government as a private contractor, but he’d given that up to teach and work on a theorem that he’d been trying to prove for the past twenty years. Before his government work, though, he’d been working in the US at a think tank of sorts, and he hadn’t enjoyed that much, so when the company had informed him that they wouldn’t be renewing his contract, her parents had packed up and moved back to the Netherlands.

“Aren’t you always?” she teased.

“I suppose so,” he said. “Is everything all right? Should I wake your mother?”

“No, it’s the middle of the night for you. I just wanted to hear a familiar voice.”

“Familiar voice? Missing us already?”

“I’ve been missing you the whole time,” she replied with a little smile. “I know I lived here before, and I like it still, but I just didn’t think it would be this different.”