Abstraction ➳ Owen Grady

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AS WAS BECOMING a common occurrence, Alysanne Sattler set in one of the lawn chairs at Owen's bungalow. It was the Fourth of July and despite the holiday, the park wasn't all that busy for the summer season. Attendance had been in decline for a while, but Ally didn't mind it, nor did Owen. He flipped two hamburgers on the grill, insisting that since she was a guest, he would do the cooking.

It was an amusing sight to say the least, especially when he nearly caught his stained apron on fire in an attempt to show off his 'skills' as he had called them. Ally set the picnic table and popped the top off of two beers, setting one by each of the paper plates. Owen placed two cheeseburgers on the open buns and slid them onto the plates.

The level of domesticity that she was able to slip into around him in moments like this was startling. A fiery sun was setting behind the mountain as they began to clean up from the summer feast. Condiments were shoved back into a small refrigerator with leftovers and utensils and plates were tossed into the sink to be dealt with at a later time. Owen grabbed two beers, tossing one over to Ally as she took a seat in one of the lawn chairs, still munching on a bag of potato chips.

A content type of silence came over them. Ally had always found that it was a rare thing to be comfortable in silence with someone. After several beers though, both his and her knack for hush was in the past. Alysanne looked over at Owen and found herself wondering if they would have been friends as children, if she could have tolerated him through middle and high school. She took a long sip of the Bud Light and threw her legs over the side of the chair. "What was Owen Grady like as a kid?"

His grin was toothy and oddly boyish. "Troublemaker, trickster, slacker." Those were the titles he had earned himself as a kid. His grin faded though and with a deep sigh, he took another swig of the pale lager. "Mom was a nurse and part-time teacher," he told her. It was a good thing his mom had been a nurse, otherwise, he probably would have spent most of his childhood in the emergency room waiting for braces and stitches. "Dad was in the Navy and kind of an asshole," he added with a shrug, not offering to say anything else on the topic. That was something Ally could understand.

"How did you get involved with this?" Only on brief occasions did Owen ever talk about his time in the Navy. Ally knew that he had been deployed two times, once to the Middle East and a second time to Somalia. Other than that he kept quiet, even about how he stumbled into becoming a behavioral researcher for raptors. "InGen pulled me into this shit after I got out of the Navy." She nodded, accepting the brief answer. "You?" He asked, one eyebrow quirked upward in question.

"Curious and rambunctious mostly." Her mother had told her that was exactly how Ellie was when they were younger. Always off on some adventure or hidden away with a book or two. Ally had always taken more after Ellie than her mother.

"Never knew my dad," she said, shrugging too. At some point, it had bothered her but after high school and college, she couldn't find it in herself to care anymore. "Mom says he was some bigshot volcanologist that wouldn't settle down. To be honest he probably doesn't know I exist." That had been the nature of her conception, a one-night stand while her mom was in college. He had left the next morning, never even looking back once. "I eventually found out who he was, though. Dr. Harry Dalton the so-called savior of Dante's Peak."

Suddenly Ally remembered that she had brought the necessities for s'mores. She hopped up and went to pull her backpack off the four-wheeler, dumping the contents on the table. Owen looked down at the chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers and then back up at Alysanne Sattler with a drunken smile that made her heart fumble just a little more than it already had.

Their chairs were arm-to-arm at the fireside. Ally held a twig over the fire with a marshmallow on the end, Owen had just finished off his fourth s'more. With another twelve pack sitting in a tub of ice, it was the beginning of a good night. Off in the distance came the first thunderous sound of a firework going off. Then another, and another. Once or twice Ally was able to catch the reflection of one on the lake's surface or see the burst of colored light over the mountain.