“We were the only ones on the street who didn’t replace our tennis court with a swimming pool,” he told the girl, who saw only the respectable present, not the complicated past.
“Would you have preferred the pool then?” she asked, head on one side.
There were times when they all would have preferred the pool, especially back when it was a clay court and he and Troy had to spend hours maintaining the damned thing, watering it, rolling it.
She said, “At least your parents could walk out the back door and be at work, right? That must have made life easy.”
It meant that Delaneys Tennis Academy had swallowed up their lives.
“Yes, although when the tennis school really took off they leased four courts and the clubhouse around the corner. The place with the smiley tennis ball sign?”
He interrupted himself. She didn’t care about the smiley tennis ball. It seemed clear she wasn’t a previous student or a club member. If there wasn’t a tennis connection, then who the hell was she? “I’m sorry, but how do you know my parents?”
She scrunched up her face as if trying to remember the right answer.
“Are you a friend of Amy’s?” he guessed. She had to be.
“I’m wearing her clothes!” She lifted up one straight leg to show the too-long jeans. “She’s much taller than me.”
“We’re a tall family,” said Logan. He felt protective of Amy, as if this girl had made fun of her height. Amy was actually the shortest in the family.
“Except for your mother,” said Savannah. A bit of her hair got stuck in her mouth and she blew it away with an irritated puff. “Your mum and I are exactly the same height.” She removed an elastic band from her wrist and pulled her hair back into a ponytail with one practiced movement. “This hair is driving me crazy. I got it cut yesterday. It’s all smooth and slippery. Your mum got me an appointment with her hairdresser.”
“It looks nice,” said Logan automatically. He was well trained. Sisters.
“It cost a lot,” said Savannah. “Your mother paid, which was really nice of her.”
“Okay,” said Logan. Was she testing out his reaction to this information? He didn’t care if his mother wanted to pay for some girl’s haircut. He saw now that the hairstyle was very similar to his mother’s, as if her hairdresser worked from a template.
“You got the day off from work?” she said.
“I work odd hours,” he said.
“Drug dealer?”
He smiled tolerantly. “I teach at a community college.”
“What do you teach?”
“Business communications.” He waited for the inevitable reaction.
She raised her eyebrows. “I would have guessed you taught … I don’t know, some kind of trade, like house painting.”
He looked down at his pants. The yellow splashes were from when he and Indira had repainted their kitchen a sunny yellow that neither of them ended up liking. The blue splashes were from when he helped paint Brooke’s clinic. He couldn’t remember where the green flecks were from.
He’d actually done house painting for a couple of years after giving up tennis. Followed by plastering. Then roof tiling. “What about building as a career?” his dad had said hopefully, trying to parlay all these different jobs into something more substantial. He wouldn’t have minded if Logan had stuck with house painting, but he couldn’t stand the fact that Logan kept working for other people. Self-employment was the way to impress his father.
“What about a degree, darling?” his mother had said. Neither of his parents had degrees. His mother said the word degree with such respect and humility it broke his heart.
When Logan was seventeen he had turned down a tennis scholarship to an American university. He often wondered what his thinking had been. Was it because he knew his father didn’t see an American scholarship as a valid path to success in tennis? “If you want to make a career of tennis, then focus on your tennis, not study.” Or was it fear? A bit of social anxiety? He’d been an awkward teenager. He remembered thinking he wasn’t enthusiastic enough for America. He spoke too slowly. He was too Australian. Too much like his dad.
He did do a part-time communications degree eventually. God knows why he did that. But that degree was enough to get him this job teaching business communication skills, and it suited him. He had no special interest in the subject itself, but he enjoyed teaching. It was fine. A steady job with good hours. He actually thought he might do it forever.
“Do you enjoy your chosen profession?” asked Savannah. Was she laughing at him? Also, was she deliberately avoiding answering his question about how she knew his parents or had she just got distracted? He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of asking again.
“Sure,” he said. “Anyway. Better get on with it.”
“Do you want some help?” She slammed the mug down on the porcelain tiles next to her, and he winced because the mug was his mother’s favorite, the one that said, There’s no place like home: except Grandma’s!