"Oh." Nonplussed, I sat at the table. I always appreciated help whenever it was given. But I had never expected Gage, of all people, to get involved in our project. I didn't know whether he'd been recruited by Carrington or if he'd offered on his own, and I wasn't certain why it made me uneasy to see them working together so companionably.

Patiently Gage showed Carrington how to make the wired circuit, how to hold the screwdriver and twist it. He held the pieces of a little switch box together as she glued it. Carrington glowed at his quiet praise, her small face animated as they worked together. Unfortunately the added weight of the bulb and wiring caused the pipe cleaner legs to collapse beneath the model. I had to bite back a sudden grin as Gage and Carrington contemplated the prostrate insect.

"It's a lightning bug with sleep inertia." Carrington said, and the three of us snorted with laughter.

It took Gage another half hour to reinforce the bug's legs with clothes hanger wire. After setting the finished project in the middle of the kitchen table, he turned the kitchen lights off. "All right, Carrington," he said. "Let's give it a test run."

Eagerly Carrington picked up the small wired box and flipped the switch. She crowed in triumph as the lightning bug began to flash in a steady repeated pattern. "Oh. it's so cool, look, look at my bug, Liberty!"

"It's great," I said, grinning as I saw how elated she was.

"High five," Gage said to Carrington, holding up his hand.

But to his astonishment, and mine, Carrington ignored the high five. Instead, she threw herself at him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

"You're the best," she said against his shirtfront. "Thanks. Gage."

He didn't move for a second, just looked down at Carrington's small blond head. And then his arms went around her. As she grinned up at him, still hanging around his waist, he ruffled her hair gently. "You did most of the work, shorty. I just helped a little."

I stood outside the moment, marveling at how easily the connection between them had been formed. Carrington had always gotten along with grandfatherly men like Mr. Ferguson or Churchill, but she'd been standoffish with the ones I had dated. I couldn't fathom why she had taken to Gage.

She couldn't become attached to him. when there was no chance of him becoming a permanent fixture in her life. It would only lead to disappointment, even heartbreak, and her heart was too precious for me to let that happen.

When Gage thought to glance at me with a quizzical smile, I couldn't smile back. I turned away on the pretext of cleaning up the kitchen, picking up bits of wire with fingers that clenched until they whitened at the tips.

CHAPTER 19

Churchill told me about strategic inflection points while we wrote the "Why Paranoia Is Good," chapter of his book. A strategic inflection point, he explained, is a huge turning point in the life of a company, a technological advancement or opportunity that changes the way everything is done. Like the breakup of Bell in 1984, or when Apple came out with the iPod. It can boost a business into the stratosphere or sink it beyond any hope of recovery'. But no matter what the results are, the rules of the game are changed forever.

The strategic inflection point in my relationship with Gage happened the weekend after Carrington had turned in the lightning bug project. It was late Sunday morning, and Carrington had gone outside to play while I took a long shower. It was a cold day with hard stinging gusts. The flatlands near Houston offered no obstructions, not even a few lonely mesquite trees to hook the hem of the sky. and the long open fetch gave the wind plenty of room to collect momentum.

I dressed in a long-sleeved tee and jeans, and a heavy wool cardigan with a hood. Although I usually flat-ironed my hair to make it shiny and straight. I didn't bother that day. letting it curl crazily over my shoulders and back.

I crossed through the visiting room with its towering ceilings, where Gretchen was busy directing a team of professional Christmas decorators. Angels was the theme she had picked that year, obliging the decorators to perch on high ladders to hang cherubs and seraphim and swags of gold cloth. Christmas music played in the background, Dean Martin singing "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with finger-snapping panache.

My feet bounced to the music as I went outside to the back. I heard Churchill's scuffly laugh, and Carrington squealing in glee. Pulling my hood up, I wandered toward the sounds.

Churchill's wheelchair was at the corner of the patio, facing an incline at the north side of the garden. I stopped short as I saw my sister standing at the end of a zip line, a cable that had been mounted on the incline and hung with a pulley that slid from the higher end to the lower one.

Gage, dressed in jeans and an ancient blue sweatshirt, was tightening the end of the line while Carrington urged him to hurry. "Hold your horses," he told her, grinning at her impatience. "Let me make sure the line will hold you."

"I'm doing it now," she said in determination, grasping the pulley handle.

"Wait," Gage cautioned, giving the cable an experimental yank.

"I can't wait!"

He started laughing. "All right, then. Don't blame me if you fall."

The line was too high, I saw with a jolt of terror. If the line broke, if Carrington couldn't hold on, she would break her neck. "No," I cried out, starting forward. "Carrington, don't!"

She looked toward me with a grin. "Hey, Liberty, watch me! I'm going to fly."