Something about her tone made his eyebrows rise a little, but he set his drink aside and nodded. “Of course.”
“What was it about that watercolor that made you sad?”
He knew exactly which painting she meant, but because her question had caught him by surprise, he stalled for a little time. “Which watercolor?”
Her expression told him she’d seen through his tactic, but she answered patiently, “The one of the rose garden and the watering can. I couldn’t see anything about it that seemed particularly forlorn. So why did it made you sad?”
It was so rare for anyone to read emotions he chose to hide and he’d thought he’d hidden his reaction to the watercolor quite well. He wondered if even his closest friends in the study group would have realized that he’d been struck by wistful nostalgia when his eyes had fallen on that simple little painting.
The fact that she saw things in him that other people seemed to miss was only one of the reasons Shannon Gambill continued to intrigue him. “I wasn’t sad, exactly. But the painting reminded me of my grandmother. My mom’s mother. She loved her roses.”
Shannon nodded in comprehension. “You miss her.”
“Very much.” Sometimes it still surprised him how much random thoughts of her could hurt him.
“How long has she been gone?”
“Almost ten years. I was a senior in college when she passed away.”
“I’m sorry. I was very close to my maternal grandmother, too. She died three years ago. My dad’s mom lives in St. Louis, and I get to see her a couple of times a year. I love her, but I’m not as close to her as I was to my other grandmother, maybe because Grammy lived here in Arkansas and I saw her all the time.”
“I never knew my father’s mother. She died before I was born.”
She toyed with the straw in her soda glass as she asked, “What did your maternal grandmother give you that no one else did?”
An interesting question. He thought about it for a moment before answering simply, “Fun.”
Maybe she interpreted that response a bit more seriously than he’d intended it. Rather than the smile he’d expected, her expressive face reflected concern, and maybe a hint of sympathy. “You didn’t have much fun as a child?”
He had no intention of playing poor-me with Shannon—or anyone else, for that matter. No one was interested in attending his pity party, he reminded himself, hearing an echo of his father’s voice in his head. “Actually, I had quite a nice childhood. I was an only child and my parents were able to provide me with advantages most kids don’t have. Educational and cultural opportunities, extensive travel, that sort of thing.”
“You said you’d visited some of the countries we saw represented in that gift shop.”
“Most of them,” he admitted. “We went on family vacations during spring breaks, Christmas vacations and summers while I was growing up. They wanted me to see as much of the world as possible, especially the countries that are the most culturally and economically different from this one. We toured South and Central America, Asia, Eastern Europe, the South Pacific islands—I never knew where we would spend the next break from school.”
He reached for his beer, hoping he hadn’t sounded boastful. He didn’t want her pity, but he wasn’t trying to impress her, either. She’d asked about his childhood and he’d described it candidly. Simple as that.
“So it was just you and your parents on all those trips?”
He nodded, gazing out at the bustling sidewalk to avoid her too-perceptive gaze. “Just the three of us.”
“But it wasn’t fun.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes,” she reminded him gently. “You did.”
This date wasn’t going exactly as he’d expected. Certainly not the way his dates usually proceeded, with him skillfully leading the conversations in the directions he wanted them to go.
“You said you were an only child,” she continued before he had a chance to think of a new topic. “Didn’t you have cousins to play with? My family was always getting together with my aunts and uncles and cousins when I was growing up—like my nieces and nephews play with their cousins now.”
“I have one cousin, on my mother’s side. My mother’s sister, Beverly, has a daughter, Kelly. Kelly’s quite a bit younger than I am, though—she’ll turn twenty in a couple of weeks and I’ll be thirty the first week of October—so we weren’t really close growing up. She has cystic fibrosis,” he added with the tinge of sadness that always accompanied thoughts of his fragile cousin. “Her health is very precarious.”
Shannon’s expressive green eyes turned to liquid emerald in sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is she the reason you’ve considered going into pulmonology?”
He was a little surprised she’d remembered that passing comment. He nodded. “I thought about it, but I’ve pretty much decided to stick with a pediatric infectious disease specialty.”
“Do you see your aunt and uncle and cousin very often? Do they live in this area?”