First Love Again. Kristina Knight

eyes but they seemed clear and his hands weren’t doing that clench-and-unclench thing they did when he was upset or having one of his spells. “The thing I never told your mom is the Betty who flirted with me was a female impersonator. Just some street performer looking for a tip.”

      Emmett choked on his water. “You flirted with a drag queen on the Santa Monica Pier?” His buttoned-up, tweed-wearing dad?

      “When was I going to meet the real woman? I was a schoolteacher from a tiny island on Lake Erie that no one outside the state has ever heard of. And I was in LA, auditioning to be a contestant on my favorite show. It isn’t as if the impersonator was a hooker or anything. She didn’t talk to me for the rest of the night.”

      “The hooker?” Emmett couldn’t keep it all straight. He checked Gibson’s eyes again but his gaze was unclouded.

      “No, your mom.”

      “Mom always had something to say.”

      “Not that night. She wouldn’t say anything. By the next morning I knew better than to bring it up, even to explain, so I dropped the subject and we came home.”

      “And you didn’t do the show.”

      Gibson shook his head and then finished his water. “I think I’ll take a nap. Wake me in an hour and we’ll start on the porch.”

      The screen door slapped shut behind him, leaving Emmett alone on the back porch wondering about the life his parents had had before he was born.

      He wished he’d seen it.

      They’d had him late in life. Gibson had been in his forties by the time Emmett was born. Although they’d never seemed old to him, they’d also never seemed young. They were his parents. Boring. Loving and attentive. But boring.

      This peek into their life before him was odd. Made him wish he’d made more of an effort to get to know them as adults.

      He pushed off the swing.

      He was here now. It was too late to get to know his mom, but he still had time with Gibson. A very short window of time—and he wasn’t going to waste it.

      Maybe, just maybe, he’d be able to right things for Jaime, too.