“Well, it’s me. I came to see you. Looks like the house needs a little work—painting and stuff. I thought I might do some of that while I’m here. Mom is making you something to eat. Come on out.”

There was some rustling around in the hayloft. This didn’t surprise Cal. His father was as far away from the door as he could get. Jed peeked over the edge of the loft, a tinfoil cap on his head. Someday Cal was going to find out why so many schizophrenics during periods of paranoia adopted the same self-protective traits. Tinfoil? Hadn’t their fears evolved beyond the point they believed the superpowers couldn’t read their minds through household foil? It was almost as though there was collective thinking among this entire subculture.

“Come on down, Dad. I’ll stay with you. Let’s go see what Mom has to eat.”

“I shouldn’t go outside,” he said. “They’re probably still around.”

“The people from the county? Nah, they’ve been gone for a couple of weeks now. Mom told me they were here and asked me to come to be sure you’re safe.”

“She did?”

“Didn’t she tell you? I bet she told you and you just forgot.”

“They took Sierra, you know. Took her away.”

“I’m going to look into that,” Cal said, but his mother had told him the truth—Sierra had checked herself into a hospital. “But first, let’s get you something to eat and while you’re eating, we can talk about fixing up the house. It needs some paint, that’s for sure.”

Jed Jones sighed heavily. “This could be a mistake.”

“Nah, I checked around. We’re good. You’re safe in the house.”

He slowly descended the ladder from the loft. He was as skinny as Frank Masterson. His dad had always been so thin, losing interest in food sometimes. When he stepped down, Cal hugged him. “Feeling a little stressed, are you?”

“What do you expect, with all the pressure?” Jed replied.

“I guess it’s reasonable. What’ve you been working on here?”

“Another lecture and a design. I have a deadline and I’m behind.”

“The class could be postponed while you catch up,” Cal said, though of course there was no class.

“It’s not a class!” Jed snapped. “It’s a briefing, for God’s sake. It’s important!”

Cal thought if he unrolled those large papers he might see some amazing drawings—machines or solar systems or even spaceships, and they would look fabulously complex and perfect. And completely useless. He grew up being told Jed held several PhD’s in law, engineering, psychology, chemistry, etc. In point of fact, he wasn’t entirely sure of Jed’s level of education. He eventually came to find out that when Jed’s schizophrenia began to take hold, when he was a young man studying prelaw in college, his family rejected him, left him to his young wife to deal with. For that reason, Marissa had never taken him back to his relatives in Pittsburgh and none of the kids had ever met that side of the family.

Marissa’s parents did what they could to help, however.

“I stand corrected,” Cal said. “But you know when you’re under pressure you don’t think as clearly. You probably need sleep. I know you need a shower and food.”

“I need to be left alone! Why doesn’t anyone leave us alone? We never broke the rules!”

Cal wondered, as he often had, what things must be like in Jed’s world. He kept his arm around his father, leading him to the house. He was a little embarrassed that Jed had his foil cap on and wished he could bring Maggie a father more like Sully, a healthy, wiseass, happy, cognitive person. Although he wanted to yank the foil cap off his head, he stubbornly didn’t. Maggie should know how it is around here.