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“It’s funny you say that, because it reminds me of the place my parents used to take me in my hometown”

“Where’s that?”

“A little town called Junction It’s in Iowa”

Gia liberally peppers the fried eggs that came on a separate plate fro up in a smile “Corn-fed boy, huh? I can see that”

“It’s a neat little town My dad had to drive me forty-five minutes each way to the nearest ice rink, but I still wouldn’t have wanted to grow up anywhere else” I nod my thanks to the waitress as she refills ure out if you’re a city girl or a small-town one”

“Both After my parents divorced, I spent a lot of time on the road withcities, s in between”

“What about school?”

There’s a fond look in Gia’s eyes as she says, “We had Mrs Slone She was the wife of one of the guys my dad played poker with, and she was a retired teacher She taughthomeschooled, but on the road”

“Sounds like you enjoyed it”

She shrugs “I loved not having to be confined to a classrooot to see the Statue of Liberty, the Black Hills, Valley Forge, the Greensboro lunch counter at the Smithsonian, the Hoover Daht then and there So books in the corner of a bar while our fathers played I know it sounds dysfunctional, but it was so ot that tione”

“What was he like?”

Her face lights up “He was serious at the poker table, but when he wasn’t playing, he loved to laugh He hugged irl in the world He never got to be as close with my brothers because they lived with our mom, but he loved them just as much as he loved me My dad was the most important person in my life”

“That’s how I felt about my mom” I look down at the table, flooded by memories of how sick she was by the end