Maggie took a sip of champagne. “Well. I’m thirty-six and have been around the block. What’s the number? How brilliant am I?”
“You must think I just fell off the turnip truck,” Walter said with a laugh. “All evidence is gone. It’s right here,” he said, tapping his temple. “And right here is getting less reliable by the day.”
“I can’t believe you think I’m a snob,” Phoebe said in a little pout.
“Don’t complain, Phoebe. You taught me to have fun. And to value the frustrations of a real home life. I even half enjoyed all those parties you carted me off to.” He rolled his eyes.
“How’d you two manage to be happy with all you were up against?” Maggie asked Walter.
“It was probably all the great sex,” Walter said.
“Ah! God!” Maggie said. “I can’t believe you said that!”
He laughed and sipped his champagne. “I’m not a very exciting guy, Maggie, I know that. Hardly anyone would take me for a complicated man with many layers. They saw one thing—a nice but boring man with a skill for neurosurgery. I was told many times that I wasn’t personable. One patient said he was so grateful for me, I changed his life forever. He also said he wouldn’t want to go to a ball game with me, but he sure was grateful. Most of my colleagues had way too many layers—booming personalities, many needs and desires, more emotions than one genie could stuff in a lamp. They were exciting men and women. I don’t even have much of a sense of humor.
“But I did need things. I wasn’t much fun but that didn’t mean I couldn’t want a fun-loving woman. I wasn’t much of a romantic but I certainly appreciated how important love was. I wasn’t full of great wisdom but I thought I could be a good father. I thought I knew enough and felt enough to raise a child successfully, though you did cast doubt on that idea a million times. There were twenty or thirty empty places inside me that could not be filled by neurosurgery, although that part of me did seem vital. One thing I found objectionable... When you make a steel worker walk again after he can’t even wiggle his toes, he shouldn’t say, ‘You might not have much of a personality, Doc, but you sure know how to untangle a spinal cord.’”
Maggie gave a snort of laughter and realized she was tearing up. Sweet Walter, brilliant Walter, just as complicated as everyone else.
“How in the world did you think you could fill up the empty places inside you with an incorrigible child?” she asked.
“I didn’t,” Walter said. “But up until you and your mother came into my world, I was living only for myself. I needed more. I needed someone to live for.” He chuckled softly. “You certainly filled the bill, Maggie.”
“Weren’t you afraid of being taken completely for granted?”
Walter shook his head. “I didn’t say I was looking to be used. I said, I needed a purpose greater than myself.”
“Enough,” Phoebe said. “Enough melancholy! We should be celebrating! Maggie won her case and is coming back to this part of the world. I’ll get my decorator to go over to your house and make sure everything is like new. I’ll send Carmen and her cleaning crew over. We’ll get back to our lives. Our real lives!”
Walter and Maggie just looked at each other and smiled.
Before Maggie left the club to drive home, she embraced Walter. “Thank you, Walter. You were a wonderful father. And I love you.”
* * *
Since Cal was driving through Leadville on his way back to the crossing, he stopped at that little hole-in-the-wall bookstore he liked. The bookstore was one of the places he was reminded of things he wouldn’t willingly change—he liked the old classics, he liked maps, he liked paper. He had an electronic reader and he used it sometimes, but he liked holding the book, smelling it. Books equaled freedom to Cal—the freedom to keep a few books of his choice, for one thing. You don’t store much of a library in a converted bus, the family’s favorite home on wheels. It was a little like hiking, like stocking the backpack—if you wanted several books, you had to sacrifice a few other items, like jeans and shoes. For Cal, those choices weren’t hard—he loved his books. Then it was the freedom of thought. Finally the freedom learning presented; the ability to achieve, to move forward.
Once he was in the bookstore, he was in no great hurry. He’d choose with care. He took a few books off the shelf and sat in a leather chair, carefully looking at the cover, copy, binding, first pages.
Someone on the other side of the shelf was fanning pages, sighing and grunting a lot. It sounded like a man who couldn’t get comfortable. But there was something a little familiar about the sounds. Cal left his short stack of books on the table beside his chair and walked around the double-wide shelf. Sitting in the corner, a couple of thick, oversize softcover reference books on his lap, Tom Canaday groaned again and rubbed his head.
Cal chuckled. “One of the kids forget to do a report or something?”
Tom looked up. “They’re all out of school, man. Well, Zach’s got some summer school because he won’t pay attention and he gets behind.” He looked down at the books in his lap. One was about lawsuits and the other—Colorado laws. “I got issues.”
“Need a hand?”
Tom had a pained expression on his face. “I can’t talk about it,” he said. “The kids don’t know anything about this and I can’t tell ’em.”
“Okay.”
“My folks don’t know anything about this. No one knows anything. No one can know.”
Cal sat on the thick table in front of Tom and lifted a book. “Legal issues, Tom?”
He sighed heavily. He looked like maybe he was going to cry.
“Maybe I can help?”
“I don’t think so, Cal.”
“Two heads are better than one,” he said. “I know how to keep a confidence.”
“I don’t know.”
“Whatever it is, you think there’s a book on it?”
Tom nodded. “I got a workbook on divorce in here. But what I need... I don’t know...”
“I’m a whiz at the library,” Cal said. “If there’s a book to help you solve your problem, I can find it for you.”
“You won’t say anything to anyone?”
“It’s in the vault. Let’s go get a cup of coffee.”
They walked down the street and around the block off the main drag to a diner the locals favored. While they walked, Tom talked.
“My ex-wife, Becky, she’s in trouble. Bad trouble. I don’t know where to start. I think I should start by telling you about us. Me. Maybe I should tell you about me.
“One of the problems with growing up in a small town, some of us just don’t think big enough. My dad had a small ranch. I played football in high school and helped my dad and the idea of growing into that ranch worked for me. I had a serious crush on Becky, who was a year younger, but I was planning to go to college and we were going to get married after. But being the genius I am, I got her pregnant. My dad’s real old-fashioned, he told me to quit school, get a job or two, marry her and sleep in the bed I made.
“Getting married, even though we were way too young and it was way too hard, that wasn’t so bad. We lived in my folks’ basement for a year or so, then we rented part of a house from a widow and it was pretty awful so I fixed it up until it was pretty darn nice. By the time Jackson was a year old the folks had come around and my dad and brother helped me fix up the house. In fact, I bet they paid for as many materials as I did. So, life was okay—I worked a lot, but I had good jobs. I drove a trash truck for a few years—dirty job but damn, the county pays good and the benefits are great. Then I started driving the plow and that pays great.
“We had Nikki and were a real content little family just barely old enough to vote. Then, after that there were a couple of accidents—Brenda and Zach. I don’t know if it was me or four kids or just the natural order of things, but
when Zach was about four, Becky had had enough. She wanted a life. Can’t say I blame her. Four kids and a husband who works all the time—not much of a life.”
“What about you?” Cal asked. “You had just as many kids. And you worked all the time.”
“Yeah, but I had the life I wanted,” he said with a shrug. “Still do. Pretty much.”
“So you’ve been divorced how long?” Cal asked.
“She left about eight years ago, we’ve been divorced about six years now. We did it ourselves. Becky’s never been far away. She moved to Aurora, worked and went to school, came back to Timberlake and stayed with us all the time. At one point she thought it’d be a good idea if the girls lived with her and the boys with me.” He snorted and shook his head. “We tried it, but it didn’t last long. But she shows up regularly. In fact, sometimes it’s just like we’re married, only nicer.”
Cal thought it might be impolite to ask, but it sounded like those were conjugal visits.
They sat in a booth in the back of the diner, ordered pie and coffee and Cal waited for Tom to get to the point. Instead he talked about his on-again-off-again relationship with his wife.
“And now Becky’s in jail,” he finally said. He hung his head.
“Ho, boy,” Cal said. “For?”
“Solicitation.” He shook his head. “I said it had to be a mistake, she wouldn’t do that. She said it was all a mistake. And it had been a mistake the first two times, too. It’s the third time. She said they’re going to make her go to jail. She needs help. She called me for help. What the hell am I gonna do? And if she’s in jail, the kids are gonna know something is terrible wrong.”
Cal’s mouth didn’t even hang open in awe, though he was a little surprised. Tom and his kids seemed so homespun, such simple rural folks without the kind of problems they have in the city. But given Cal’s experience as a defense attorney, he’d seen and heard just about everything.
“I never suspected anything like this, not in a million years. I thought she lived pretty good for an office worker. But she’s so beautiful, I thought she had boyfriends. Generous boyfriends. She didn’t talk about her love life, but I figured she had one even though I didn’t have one. But she could afford things. Nice things.”
“Did you pay support?” Cal asked.
“I didn’t really pay alimony,” he said. “We didn’t have an arrangement for that since I had the kids. But sometimes she ran short and I gave her money. I paid some child support for that little while when she had the girls. I wanted to be sure they were getting what they needed, you know?”
“Your original agreement is for joint custody?” Cal asked.
“We wrote it that way, yeah. The idea was to help each other out with the kids.”
“What about property?” Cal asked.
“What property?” he asked with a laugh.
“Furniture? Cars?”
He shrugged. “I told her to take anything she wanted, I didn’t want to fight. What I wanted was for her to stay.”
“Have you gotten over that now?”
“I guess it’s about time, isn’t it? I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to let the kids visit her now. And her coming to us?” He shook his head. “I can’t think about that right now. Zach and Brenda, twelve and fourteen, at the absolute worst time for teenagers, they don’t need this. But she loves her kids and they love her. I want to believe it’s a mistake, but three mistakes? Man, I’m so screwed.”
“Does she have a lawyer?” Cal asked.
“Not yet, but she said she’ll have to find one. She has nice stuff but she doesn’t exactly have money. And she’s heard bad things about court appointed lawyers, like they get a little lazy on these free clients.”
“I don’t think that’s necessarily true. But I think you’re going to need a little help here, Tom. Legal help.”
He shook his head. “I’ll go online and study up. There’s gotta be lots of help online. I bet if I break down and tell Jackson, he’ll help me look things up. After he recovers from his nervous breakdown. That kid is smarter than anything. But I—”
“Tom, you need a lawyer.”
“Cal, I can’t hire a lawyer. I can’t even bail her out—she’s gonna have to sit there till her court date in a week or so. We get by job to job. We’re doing all right but there’s not two nickels left over, trust me.”
“You have options. There’s got to be a legal clinic around here somewhere. Might be Denver or Colorado Springs, but there’s help out there. An attorney with experience in criminal defense would be best. Or maybe I can help you. I’m an attorney. But I have no experience in Colorado statutes. I can learn, though. It’s not complicated, just a matter of looking things up.”
Tom’s mouth was hanging open. “You’re a what?”
“Lawyer,” Cal said. “A defense attorney, as a matter of fact. I practiced in Michigan and the state of Colorado has graciously extended licensing to me here.”
“You’re a lawyer? And you’re raking campsites and taking out trash?”
Cal smiled. “I am a man of many talents. I also have a checkbook in the truck. Let’s go by the bank so you can get Becky out of jail.”
* * *
Maggie enjoyed the drive back to Sully’s. She used the time to think about her conversation with Walter. The first thing she was going to do—she was going to find a way to show Walter how much he mattered in her life. She had two pretty awesome fathers, nothing alike, and each in his own way, sensitive and astute. She wasn’t sure what would have become of her if she hadn’t had both of them in her life.
So here we are. Four and a half months ago she’d felt she had lost everything. She’d thought she had nothing. No one. No one but Sully. And even Sully, she’d thought, hadn’t really wanted her. And no one needed her. Oh, there had been patients but she was hardly the only neurosurgeon.
Almost five months later her biggest discovery was that she wanted it all. She wanted her fathers, her dippy mother, a husband or at least a full-time partner. And a child. She wanted that child she felt had been taken from her. She wanted a full home life—and she wanted to practice again. She wanted to pull her salad out of the garden but also to go to excellent restaurants now and then. She wanted everything. There would have to be compromises, but she’d figure that out.
Who was that husband going to be? It was not going to be Andrew; that relationship was far behind her. But was there any way to convince California Jones he’d be happy with her? She had the slightly paranoid fear she was a placeholder and that he hadn’t yet decided what his life would look like in the future.
As she drove into the campground, she came upon the strangest sight. There were people on the porch of the store, the porch of the house, and several were sitting in cars. And Stan’s big SUV police cruiser was parked between a huge bull and the store. There were a couple of turned-over picnic tables, a collapsed tent and a healthy dent in the police cruiser.
“Maggie, stay in the car!” Stan’s voice boomed over his loudspeaker.
There, in the grassy area between the store and the campsites, the bull was grazing lazily. But it was very clear that before he settled down to lunch, he’d scared everyone half to death.
She looked at the ceiling of her car. “When I said all, I wasn’t counting on this!”
Come forth into the light of things,
let nature be your teacher.
—William Wordsworth
Chapter 15
Colorado was an open-range state. That meant the cattle roamed where they would, though ranchers took some measures to keep their herds segregated. The lake and the campgrounds and homes around the lake were surrounded by cattle ranches and grazing land. The entire valley was cattle land with a little silage farming for feed. If you didn’t want cows in your yard you had to fence yo
urself in, and that included public roads, lands and parks. Though it wasn’t a daily issue, there were times a piece of fence was down and cattle wandered onto the roads and highways, into parks and yards.
Ranchers usually kept closer tabs on their bulls, especially if they were a little testy, as this one was.
Maggie spied Cal on the porch and gave him a sheepish wave. He waved back.
She put her car in gear and oh-so-gently inched her way around the store to the rear entrance. Cal stepped out of the store onto the back porch and signaled to her that it was safe to get out of her car and come inside.
“Better stay indoors. You’re not dressed to try to outrun that bull,” he said, taking her hand and tugging her into the store.
“Where’s Sully?”
“Trying to keep everyone back. And don’t surprise him—he’s got the shotgun out.”
A little laugh escaped her. “What’s he going to do with a shotgun besides piss him off?”
“We’ve had that discussion. He said not to worry, that Stan has the big gun, but he’s not convinced Stan’s a better shot.”
“Lovely. Maybe they’ll have a shoot-out,” she said. She walked toward the front of the store, which was full of women and children. But the men and a couple of young women, it seemed, just couldn’t resist the porch. “Hi, Sully. That the Mitchells’ bull?”
“Yeah, and they’re taking their sweet goddamn time coming after him. I’m going to send them a bill. That goddamn bull had himself a party.”
“I thought that might be Cornelius. Anybody hurt?” she asked.
“Scraped knee or two. I think we’re all okay. Bet some folks’ll never trust this campground again.”
“Others will think it’s the best entertainment they’ve had,” Maggie said. And right then and there she decided. I’m going to stay here, raise my family here.
“Here she comes, about time,” Sully said. “I ought to load that bull with buckshot just for good measure. Can’t she keep an eye on her bull?”